#actuallypolyfragmented

[subsystems]

Do you have any tips for system mapping as a polyfragmented system? Every time we've tried to make one we've just gotten overwhelmed by how many parts there are and how much we don't know

Hi anon! I have some advice based off of my own experience. I hope it will work for you (I'm sorry if it doesn't, though). First, I want to stress that it's okay if you can't create a perfect system map. I've never been able to make one that felt 100% correct, and I've tried many times!

Being dissociative can make it quite difficult to understand what's going on internally. You might have a hard time understanding yourself as an individual part, let alone understanding the other parts in your system. On top of that, your system might have some complex inner organization, like subsystems or parts-within-parts. Don't even get me started on how amnesia can make this all even more confusing, too!

So, remember to cut yourself some slack when it comes to system mapping. Your struggles with it are completely understandable!

Tips for System Mapping When Your System is Confusing as Hell

Make your own template.

A lot of pre-made system mapping templates contain things that don't apply to everyone, aren't important to everyone, or not everyone knows enough about their parts to answer. Some designs might not fit how your system functions. So, if pre-made templates don't work for you...don't use them! Try making your own!

When it comes to your own template, I think it's important to be mindful of your current stage of recovery. If you don't know a lot of things about your parts, that's okay -- that's where you're at in your recovery right now. In that case, you probably shouldn't create a template that requires you to write down a ton of information. Allow yourself to include your confusion and questions into your system map!

Think about what you want to keep track of when it comes to your parts. What would be the most useful things for you and your therapist to know? Yours will probably look different but here was the template that I settled on:

Does the part have a name?

Do they feel younger or older than the body?

What are they associated with?

Anything else?

And here's an example of how I would fill this out:

Does the part have a name? I don't think so

Do they feel younger or older than the body? Much younger

What are they associated with? The color yellow, puppies, childhood, abandonment, crying

Anything else? Likes puppies and drawing, sometimes buys candy without our knowing, unsure if this is one part or actually several

Get messy with it.

I understand the desire to have a neat system map. I've always wanted to have a perfect list of all my parts, all the important details about them, maybe organized into some sort of chart too. But these things doesn't always capture the complexities of being dissociative and having parts. Sometimes, you got to get messy.

I feel like the closest I ever came to a system map that felt the most "right" was in my therapist's sand tray. I picked out different figurines to represent my parts, placing some closer together than others. I would also move the sand, making big and low hills beneath and between parts, burying some things, cutting lines around other things. Something like this picture, but way more chaotic:

You can do this at home. You don't even need sand or figurines. You could grab some objects from around the house or outside, print or cut out pictures, grab some paints, scribble on paper, sculpt something out of clay, etc. Pick out something to represent certain parts or feelings or situations. Place them wherever, move them however, just let it kind of unfold naturally. Then take a picture of it and/or write about it (so you don't forget)!

Maybe put the trauma stuff somewhere else.

You'll probably feel tempted to record trauma memories and triggers associated with parts -- but it's probably best to write that stuff down somewhere else! You want your system map to be something that all parts can look at. Try not to jump-scare them with trauma that they may or may not know about yet.

This won't apply to everyone but, in my own experience, including stuff like this in our system map triggered our avoidance. Not only did it make creating the system map harder, it also resulted in some parts destroying/hiding what we wrote as a way to protect themselves and other vulnerable parts.

Aaand that's all I have to say, I think. Good luck with your system mapping, anon! - Sunflower

[metalhealth-willdriveyoumad]

To get kinda personal for a sec, I forgot how surreal splitting can get especially for the long ones. The short ones that weren’t caused by something immediately bad/traumatic for us have always been *oh something’s wrong* *blurry blurry blurry* *intensifies by 100* *mental flash of white* *oh hi rockstar #37* and that’s kind of it

But with the long ones, there’s a whole range of things that you either don’t experience or speedrun through when they’re quick so the feeling doesn’t stay with you after the fact. Like, I can just be sitting there and just feel like I have someone else’s facial features. Not like the face attached to my body isn’t mine, but like the nose that is definitely mine and attached to my face is a completely different looking nose, or eyes or whatever.

Or, having fluctuating control of different body parts (which is odd enough with just other frontera because we don’t have full possessive switches all that often). This is still kind of happening. Right now I can move my right hand fine, but it feels kinda syrupy like it’s been asleep and it keeps defaulting to a position like I’m about to play piano. Last night I had almost no control over two fingers, and a little bit ago I just couldn’t do anything while it had what looked like a tic attack (that I know wasn’t one). I wrote half this post so far with just one hand, which is a pain and a half. (I took it off the phone for a second and it started again for a second). The whole process feels like it’s staring with the left now which is fun.

I’ve also spent most of today and the end of last night listening to the same album on loop. It’s something I’ve done completely by myself and it’s an album I would do that with, but it feels way different. I’ve switched to something else by a different artist to maybe help get someone else out so I at least don’t have to do this solo, and I’m actually having jitters (physically shaking) and I can only assume it’s because of that.

Honestly, I don’t even know how long this thing’s been going on. Because a while back, I remember getting a vague feeling of a half-formed someone new here (two someone’s, actually) and getting the kinda spacey feeling, and then they both went away and I haven’t seen them since. But now this is happening and I’m getting flashes of them again, so I get the feeling it turned into a three part split instead of two. Because that would help explain why this is hitting so hard.

The big positive I can find for this at the moment is that it would absolutely explain why I’ve had such a hard time grounding in the innerworld or getting anyone else solidly out front, with or without me. That’s it. That’s the bright side. My thumbs are fighting with me and my head hurts. The headcount getting higher doesn’t bother me, it never really has (perks of not being the original host, I guess), I’m just so tired of the active part of splitting. If someone could just give me a button to make this whole thing go faster, that would be great.

[im-sixx-sixx-sixx]

the irony of writing a trauma breakdown in a “Leave Your Fears Behind” journal

[the-lad-system]

Actual good pinned post in progress. This blog is questionably active (it just feels easier to post on sideblogs) so there’s more system stuff elsewhere. Sideblogs are:

@metalhealth-willdriveyoumad (Jabari & Corey || Mostly J + 80s glam metal atm with some mental health stuff, that should hopefully change eventually)

@im-sixx-sixx-sixx (Nikki || Mötley Crüe, knives, and some [artistic/drawn] gore)

@call-me-xyl (Xyl || Currently kind of inactive, mostly Guns N’ Roses & fan art)

@cherrie-py (Cherrie || Currently kind of inactive, mostly Warrant)

[scoobied]

struggling with being polyfragmented. struggling with being a complex did system.

i spent a long time being like. "why am i polyfrafmented? my trauma wasn't that severe"

guess who was a victim of familial traffickingggggg <3

guess who accidentally uncovered these memories last weekend after the worst college semester of my liiiiiife <3

[omnium-gatherums]

Dissociative Amnesia in DID

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Dissociative amnesia is characterised by an inability to recall important autobiographical memories, typically of recent traumatic or stressful events, that is inconsistent with ordinary forgetting. —Dissociative Amnesia, ICD-11

The key thing about dissociative amnesia is that you typically won't know about it because by amnesia's very nature and definition, you don't remember what you don't remember.

Most patients are partly or completely unaware that they have gaps in their memory. They become aware only when personal identity is lost or when circumstances make them aware—eg, when others tell them or ask them about events they cannot remember.

You frequently forget what you do/talk about in therapy sessions, or can only vaguely remember some stuff about your therapy sessions.

You don't remember most of your childhood, or life in general

Memory gaps for your adult life are particularly notable.

You've forgetten positive/good/happy memories as well as traumatic ones

People talk to you about things like what happened on vacation with you, funny times in school together, etc., and you don't remember much of it, and/or you might misremembered some of the details (which often furthers our distrust of ourselves and of our memories).

Some subtle signs:

You often find yourself 'guessing' your memories; "I think (xyz) happened, but I don't know/I can't really remember", "I think I vaguely remember (xyz), but I don't know", "it might be a memory, but it just feels like a dream, so I can't be sure that it's a real memory", etc.

Never trusting your memories in general, always second-guessing, triple-guessing... Never Being Sure, always questioning the legitimacy of how you remember things and what you remember

You frequently need to "jog" your memory, and it often takes a lot of work to do so

Never trusting your memory, and needing to check over and over, even if you're certain you're remember something right (for example, calling the doctor's office to remember what time an upcoming appointment is, even though you're sure you wrote down the correct time) - this could also be a possible symptom of OCD

You find yourself constantly looking at your calendar, "out of habit"; you find yourself relying on a calendar to remember everything, like upcoming appointments, special dates, what the day of the week is, what month it is, etc.

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Memories feel vague, fuzzy, cloudy, foggy...

A lot of your memories feel like dreams

You question if a lot of your memories are real or not

You sometimes feel like trying to remember something is really difficult, almost as if something or someone is 'blocking' you/when attempting to remember something, it feels like there's a "mental wall", "mental block", etc.

You might struggle with aphantasia, which can make it harder to "see"/remember your memories.

Your memories are in the third person

Your memories feel like somebody else's memories, like a totally different person, etc.

Every day "feels like a new day."

People close to you feel like strangers. They aren't LITERALLY strangers (although this can happen sometimes with some people with DID), but they FEEL like it, even though you know who they are.

Time is Distorted

The day goes by extremely fast

A week or month or year goes by extremely fast

Something that happened recently feels like it happened a very long time ago. On the other hand - something that happened a very long time ago feels recent.

Emotions are Absent

You remember things with little to no emotions attached, including positive/good/happy memories. Struggling to remember how you felt, what happened, how something happened, what happened before, or after, etc.

Alexithymia; you struggle to know how you feel, how you felt; you struggle to identify emotions, and express them

You may use describe your emotions in "odd" or "strange" ways

You may have to rely on an outside source to help you identify and figure out how you feel (such as looking at a wheel of emotions and looking at them until you feel like you found something that fits)

Relaying your memories in a very "factual" way; you may feel as if you're 'relaying' what you have been told, rather than talking about what you truly "remember"

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"I feel like my memories are like a giant puzzle with tons of missing pieces"

"I feel like my memories are like photographs with burnt edges"

You feel like you relate to a lot of the things in this post, but you can't be sure/you can't remember (is this calling you out lmfao?)

[the-indigo-symphony]

Small Annoyances as a Polyfragmented System

There are certain patterns and events that we see in our life (mainly in system spaces) that get under our skin as a polyfrag system that smaller systems don't seem to be able to relate to. In an attempt to spread information on what it's like to be a polyfrag system – because goodness knows it's hard to find that – we've created this list of those annoyances, along with examples and explanations of why we find them annoying. Although, this turned into a vent post by the end, so... you have been warned!

Disclaimer: this post mainly applies to our personal experiences. We're sure that other polyfrag systems (and probably other large systems) may be able to relate to some of the things here, but you don't have to relate to any or all of them to be a real polyfrag system.

Polyfragmented Annoyances:

Most system tips do not work with our system because they're based in having a small member count. Anything that starts with "Have every system member..." is a no-go, because it is impossible for us to include every system member in system activities. There's a bunch of people in dormancy, whole sidesystems that we've barely explored, and even counting only the members we know could potentially participate, that's still hundreds of people to go through. It's not gonna work out. "Every system member" is not an achievable goal.

Blurring and other identity confusion happens a lot more often than you'd think, since a lot of us are fragments or otherwise not "full" headmates. When you don't check all the boxes to be a fully independent system member and constantly need at least one other member around to get even basic stuff done, it can be easy to lose track of where the line between you and another system member is.

On that note, co-fronting is a necessity and people outside the system (whether system or singlet) don't seem to understand that very often. We need to have multiple people in front – our system is not designed to have only one person alone controlling the body and aware of what's going on. Whereas most other systems experience negative side effects if they have too many headmates fronting, we more often experience negative side effects if not enough headmates front, and that can create a lot of estrangement when the former is usually the only example of fronting arrangement issues you can find. In addition, people outside the system (mostly singlets, but some systems too) don't seem to understand the implications of "We usually/almost always have a crowded front." Any interactions you have with one of us are going to be overseen, filtered through, and influenced by everyone else in front; if you're building a relationship* with one of us, you're probably building a relationship with several others, too.

Having to do so much more work to keep track of everyone. Organizing headmates by sidesystem, subsystem, etc can be a hassle, and system mapping becomes a lot more difficult when you've got a lot of people to include in your map. You not only have to frequently register new members in things such as Pluralkit and SimplyPlural, but you have to update that data as they learn more about themselves and the system develops, so we end up taking hours to just sit down and go through as many headmates as we can. Simply put, keeping any records of our system is so much more complicated because we're polyfragmented, even if it's just something basic like writing down everyone's names.

Introjects often face a name struggle that they wouldn't if we were a smaller system. Because of how often we get multiple introjects of the same character or person, every introject is expected to take up some kind of nickname so they can be more easily identified and identity issues aren't too frequent, which is its own troublesome process. Especially when we see small systems who don't need to do this... it can make us a bit jealous at times.

It's difficult to find anything about systems of our size. Most systems on platforms like TikTok and YouTube are small, so it's hard to find videos about larger systems. Most systems in fiction, whether they're positive representation or the usual stock-horror serial killer stereotype, have a small number of members so audiences don't get lost or confused. Even within the system community in settings like on Tumblr, it can be hard to find other large systems talking about their own experiences and how they differ from smaller systems – in fact, the experiences of small systems are seen as the "right" experiences in some cases, so if a large system goes outside of that, they are seen as "faking," "promoting unhealthy behavior," etc. We just want to find posts about us that go beyond one-sentence shout-outs, c'mon.

Related to that second-to-last bit, common polyfrag experiences are treated as automatic signs of "faking." Oh, you have a lot of headmates? Faker! You have more than one introject of or from the same source? Faker! You gain new members easily? Faker! Your headmates have highly specific roles? Faker! Some headmates don't have roles because others already handle those jobs? Faker! You often have multiple people in co-front or co-con? Faker! JFC, why is my existence automatically seen as a lie?! A lot of these fakeclaimers supposedly "support" polyfrag systems, too, but then the second a polyfrag system is, y'know, polyfrag, oooohhhh noooo, time to write a call-out about how they're "obviously faking it."

*"Relationship" is used as a general term here and does not refer solely to romantic relationships.

In conclusion, being polyfragmented comes with a lot of small annoyances that aren't helped by how, even in system spaces, we're often misunderstood, mocked, and fakeclaimed. It'd be nice to find more content or resources about/for polyfrag systems, but I'm not holding my breath.

[youandyour150people]

Me when there’s a mild inconvenience

[call-me-xyl]

Time to reward our two hours of socialization with months of self-isolation!

[endersdead]

has anyone else ever experienced something like this? an alter in my system (who i believe to be the main gatekeeper) is telling me that they are withholding information about my system from me because “im not ready”, and “this is the way it has to be”. this happened when i asked about communicating with other alters in my system (most of whom i have literally never met), but i have received this response when asking about memories as well. if you’ve experienced something similar, how did you work through that? were you ever able to get them to open up?

[subsystems]

People with DID/OSDD: if you’re facing stressful times or life changes, then it’s not weird for your system’s “routine” to flip itself upside down. Certain dynamics might change, like who the main fronters are or how much communication & switching there is. I've had times where I went from some communication/switching to NONE, other times when I went from having hardly any to suddenly A LOT. If this has ever happened to you, you were not making it up. It's just something that dissociation can do!

[metalhealth-willdriveyoumad]

Anyone ever think they’re doing alright and then something happens and apparently you were doing fundamentally worse than you than you thought? Not like things got worse, but things were always this bad and now you’ve gotta deal with it?

[im-sixx-sixx-sixx]

Metal, horror, and my knife fetish (I’ll let you decide if that’s a joke or not). And a little artistic gore, as a treat

My name’s Nikki, but you can call me whatever you want - I prefer Bastard

Obviously mentally ill

This one ain’t for the kids

(@the-lad-system)

[the-lad-system]

Question!

What’s the funniest/most unfortunate/what have you time you’ve split?

I’ll start. Watching the new Mission Impossible. In the theater. With our mom right next to us.

The whole split didn’t happen during the movie (it didn’t stop until the next morning), but that first hour-ish of it was a //trip//

So, stories?

[sleepy-shutin]

Hi there, I just wanted to thank you a huge amount for providing accurate information on polyfragmented systems. It means so much to us. We were cult abused in severe ways from the age of two, and seeing the sudden popularity and misinterpretation of the term has... honestly been a little soul-crushing. Seeing it used in a diminishing sort of way to it's real meaning when it's much more complicated, and has been so life-ruining, is really tragic. Systems with situations as severe as ours never get a voice in the community, despite being the most vulnerable group within. In short: thanks <3

~ 🌒

it’s just as soul-crushing to me as well. i constantly flip flop between knowing/believing i’m polyfragmented to going into serious denial all the time, and seeing people not take the label seriously is infuriating. polyfragmentation is not something to take lightly and having a lot of alters is not what makes someone polyfragmented.

to the DID community:

take polyfragmentation more seriously. it is not just about being autistic and splitting a lot of fictives, and if you think that’s what makes one polyfragmented, you are being willfully ignorant. you are misinforming people on a severely complex and specific presentation of DID. it is not just having a lot of alters. it is not just having a lot of fictives, and autism has no correlation with it irt hyperfixations/special interests.

check out my tag for pf-DID if you want to know what pf-DID actually entails.