Nearly every single comment misgenders me (they/them) and makes some WILD assumptions about us. Not to mention the horrid reading comprehension since they repeat the same "forcing the baby to roleplay" and "making things about myself" and "stepping over boundaries" talking points, which I already addressed in the original post clarifying that I was not, in fact, planning on or willing to do any of those things.

Imagine devoting THAT much time to hatefully yapping about things you don't want to understand. Absolutely pathetic.

Today was a lot. We've spent the last 2 months in syscovery, and today (or i guess technically yesterday now) we found 2 more alters (up to 17 so far), and by complete chance one of our more fundamentally different ones came to front (mina, mentioned in the screenshot). And. Idk. It's... really settling in that. I'm really not the singlet we thought we were. And it's scary

I've debated making this post. It feels like I'm adding salt to my already opened wound. But I didn't know where to go

I know I have some type of plurality disorder. We have become a completely different person in the past year and a half (for the better of course) and for once in our life we're mentally stable. Or at least as close as we could be while dealing with this

We took ourselves to a psychiatrist who referred us to a psychologist. We did a psychological evaluation and we got our results yesterday. It's safe to say, we're devastated

Our psychologist didn't give us a diagnosis. Instead, they reasoned that we were extremely complex imaginary friends created because we were lonely as children. In my official paperwork it says "patient is suspected of exaggerating symptoms" and "I believe her symptoms are probably more related to Autism.. and her desire to fit in with her peers"

We're expected to have extremely high functioning level autism. I don't know if Autism can give you the ability to speak any language you want, create complex imaginary friends with their own personality traits and history, hear their voices in your head, smell food through a screen, hallucinate the smell of food through a screen, meditate and see inside your head, I don't know that. I don't know what to do. I have all of this stuff on my paperwork and yet all I got to show for it is "extremely complex imaginary friends"

Tried to portray what happens with one of our members, S (the cat-like character here), when he is nearby front and someone else is main his characteristics often rub off on the main fronter. In this case, I’m talking about the ears and tail he has. Sometimes when I can’t tell he is around, I’ll react to something externally and almost feel the ears moving on my head in a phantom/imagination kind of way. I’m unsure how to describe this.
Same goes occasionally if a member has glasses in headspace. That is some times how I distinguish who’s in front when things are blurry

Now as for the emotions? This happens with anyone in particular. Bleeding emotions are very common for us. More with some than others though.

Wondering if anyone else relates to any part of this?

- ED

Based off of something me (Midnight) and one of my partners and kismesis (Youtube) got into some weeks ago. Its...definitely an *interesting experience* and ***woops we might have to cover that glowing TV up hahaha***! /ref

"I might be transgender but we have college so idrc rn" type shit

So I have to write an essay for my college class and I really want to write about non-disordered plurality/multiplicity but I'm worried about references and sites or whether this is a good idea at all.

I also have a really hard time writing but it's easier when it's something I like. My prof also specified it needs to be a topic we're knowledgeable in. So I thought it would be a good topic for me.

What do y'all think? Does anyone have any good articles or papers I can reference?

yeah it was like 5 big ones suddenly but that was beyond unhelpful lmao

(I'm not 100% on the terminology but I'm pretty sure little is a child alter and middle is a teenage one? and I would be a host I think, one of us once referred to me as our "normalsona" lmao but please let me know if I got anything wrong)

hey. the rest of me calls this me pink. we're a 26 yo trans woman who realised she was a system a few months ago. there's me who manages most of the day to day stuff and acts as the emergency situation handler, I'm good at not feeling pain, the witch who's much more of a confident social performer and loves attention, mrs bones who feels most of this body's pain, shy bethany who I'm pretty sure is like 14 and likes cute things but is super anxious and the little girl who is maybe 6 that keeps trying to kill and hurt us.

we're also a pretty heavy stoner. generally we use over a gram a day and we have it prescribed for medical use. We've been using it almost daily since late 2024 when I dug a little too deep in our memories and unrepressed the traumas that caused the little girl and shy bethany to create and hide themselves away throughout childhood and adolescence. the PTSD from those unrepressed traumas has been exceedingly disabling and explains a lot of why we are the way we are. we've had a lot of coping mechanisms over the years and weed has been the best one by far.

I like it because it KILLS the tremors dead and helps us recover a lot easier and quicker from individual flashbacks. it's a lot cheaper, a lot more directly effective and has a lot less health risks than any of the other unhealthy coping mechanisms we've tried. and with how many therapists have abandoned us and how rough antidepressants were on us, it's also accessible with minimal interfacing with medical systems. uncertainty fucks with me badly and being able to get and use it whenever I need is a comfort. I'm also not gonna pretend it's not fun as hell to put on a movie or streamer and laugh my ass off.

the witch generally finds it a lot easier to front when we're a bit baked so she likes to always have at least a little in the system (hah) but she also likes playing into the "hahahaaa 420 weed blazeit" stuff and just generally finds being high fun and loves eating and enjoying art and stuff on it. Mrs bones likes it because we've got chronic pain and being weed helps with that considerably, especially when she's stuck in front and just in agony and can't get any rest. the little girl isn't really someone I can really communicate with and it does sometimes feed into her self destructive instincts a little but if she's threatening to front and do something actually dangerous then weed makes her lose interest quicker. I dunno if that's the ideal solution but it's a better than nothing reliable means of keeping us safe.

and then we have shy bethany. like I said, she's got a horrible anxiety problem and weed helps that a fair bit, at least in the short term. it makes her feel a lot more comfortable expressing herself! the thing is, she fucking loves it. it makes the videos she likes funnier and the food she likes tastier and she kind of looks up to the witch a bit and sees her getting high a lot and wants to copy that. quite often she will ask whoever's in front to take a hit and while sometimes it's like "eh what the hell" I will usually say no. and if I say no too often I'll dissociate for a few minutes and come back to find my dry herb vape repacked and heating up or she'll confess to having taken edibles when they hit or whatever and I'm rarely mad? like I spend a lotta time stoned anyway, it doesn't bother me and just means I think less clearly and directly in exchange for PTSD being less of a hazard.

buuuut I'm kinda starting to realise maybe I should be "parenting" my younger alters a little more so to speak and try to look after them both a bit more. I don't know if that means trying to regulate how much shy Bethany uses because me and bones are a little tired of getting way too high and I doubt it's exactly helping her anxiety in the long run. I've been trying to listen to what her and the girl wanna eat and like places they wanna go and things they wanna do or like things they wanna own to a reasonable degree with what we're physically capable of and can afford. but do I need to talk to the witch and try and work with her to get bethany to have a bit less weed because like I say she is probably like 14, 15 maximum and I don't know if letting her do drugs is really good for her lmao

tldr im a stoner to cope with trauma but now I know I'm plural I know that a teenager in my head keeps smoking a bunch of my weed and I'm wondering if I should be stopping her lmao

I had a horrible horrible horrible nightmare and I’m worried I’m still in it because I believe in the concept of reality shifting or maybe I died in the nightmare and was sent back by god? I slept on my back and compromised my neck again during sleep cause possible heds and had a horrible nightmare where I kept waking up from horrible nightmares and being partially paralyzed yet still able to move my whole body somehow and I just wanted to wake up for real but I kept reality testing and it failed then I looked in the mirror a few times(yea ik I’m not supposed to do that) I think it was defo lucid at some times because I was reality testing to make sure it was reality but kept failing as the window was looking in at our kitchen or the ceiling was looking up at a new room in our house in another dream and irl the window and a few times i screamed for dad and then dad got me a few times we ran on the street and I had the horrible thought of oh no this isn’t reality the street looks too weird the gravity is too off and then st the last point I charged my phone finally and then i had to enter 110 as the passcode and then 99(specified it was for males) and then I finally ACTUALLY woke up

so, we've been REALLY disordered lately because of a lot of major life events happening all at once, and one of the concequences of that has been that we've been splitting a lot more than usual (it feels kind of like right after our syscovery weirdly)

and, one of the concequences of this is that i think my mind is trying to specifically create a fictive/introject, at the moment it seems to be trying to make someone from Deadlock, but it just...hasn't? like i feel like someone is trying to form, but afterwards that feeling just kind of goes away

i...don't really know how to feel about that, if i should be worried or excited or really anything, we only have 1 other fictive, and they appeared when i was younger, so we've never really had that feeling before, has anyone else experienced this, and does anyone have any advice?

Hello, it's primarily Katsuya, I have not introduced myself, I don't consider this the right time eitherway.

Just wondering if any other Fictives or system members have experienced something uncomfortable like this.

Hi there,

For a good chunk of my life I've always been rather disconnected from myself as a singular person. I experienced a lot of trauma through my childhood and teenager years that I often blank and would rather not remember. My issues come in when recently I came to terms that my head and person doesn't feel singular, like my identity is multiple things and people at all times, including when I have conversations with myself in my head. I couldn't pick out a singular person per say but I've always felt like multiple instead of singular.

I was just wondering if anyone could give me advice on exploring research options so I can potentially bring them up when talking to a GP.

For context : our body is white. We don't have Swahili roots, we don't know someone who has Swahili roots, we never went to any country outside of Europe and we're not aware of the Swahili culture, pretty much not at all.

For many reasons, but I have to admit mostly aesthetic reasons, a black (internally) headmate formed, not through any introjection or similar means. They're 100% sysmade.

They are also linked to electricity. We wanted to look into names linked to electricity and we saw the name "Umeme". From the light research we've done, it's a pretty perfect name : unisex, with a meaning associated with lightning and overall fits our headmate's personality. However, we know not to trust name lists as they can give you names that aren't names.

So, is it okay? The reason why I'm asking is because their previous name doesn't really fit anymore and they'd like to try other names to find the one to settle with.

(Obligatory disclaimer that we don't claim any black experiences or black culture since we are bodily white and most of the member's somas are white anyway)

OK, so due to a Discord server being anti-endo, I've arrived at this subreddit for answers :]

Do you guys have any resources/documentations on non-traumatic plurality?

AAAAAAND since endos are kind of the main topic (though I'd be happy if anyone answered!! I need all the info I can get!! :DDD), can any endo systems uhm....... explain it? (IDKHOWTOWORDTHISI'MSOSORRY)

[edited for some more context :: someone is saying that you can't be plural w/o having DID, is that true?" ]

[edit 2/3: Thank you all sososo much for the answers!!!! I've left the server, but I'd still love to learn more things about endos :D]

hello folks. Bermuda tells me i should probably introduce myself and add a bit of backstory. i am Fireball. i am a Cinderace pokemon. and i came about after the system replayed pokemon Shield. their starter was a Scorbunny and throughout the game they started to bond with him. by the time they got to the Elite 4, they began to feel a sense of...i guess attunement and started speaking as if i was there and not merely as a team member. they put on a Scorbunny hat and felt myself firmly settled into the crew. Lambert gave me the role of Quartermaster since i am tactical and a strategist.

so yeah, i am here now and part of the crew. i dont have a charm yet for the collar but we'll get one made soon enough.

-Fireball

So I think I'm the host and I've been stuck fronting for ages. Years probably. I don't remember much before that. I used to be chronically dissociated so I probably wasn't always the host, but I'm not used to not fronting.

I've always been able to talk to my headmates, but didn't realise until recently that they might be different people and not just parts of myself from my subconscious, whatever that is. I don't think they knew either. Since learning more about plurality we've been having conversations about letting them have more autonomy and front more often, but some of us are a bit apprehensive. I certainly am. Letting someone else take over my body completely is a really scary thought and we need to build up some trust first.

Sometimes we speak to each other internally and sometimes out loud. Sometimes they speak to others out loud through me too, but it's usually more like they feed me the words (and sometimes just thoughts to translate because I'm good at communicating,) and I say it. A lot of the time I feel like what I say is a mixture of different headmates' thoughts and it's hard to separate out who's saying what. They can speak from our mouth directly occasionally but I didn't know what was happening and it really confused me, but it makes more sense now. I can still sense everything though and it's a strange experience.

Sometimes they communicate what they'd like to do and let me do it for them. They can sense everything but I'm the one moving our body. A lot of the time we co-front but I usually control our body on our collective behalf, but their thoughts and emotions mix with mine more and influence me and that's how they have some control. I can feel them in the front of my mind when we co-front and it feels more like I'm becoming them than losing control of parts of my body to them.

I don't think they're used to controlling our body directly except for the occasional talking. I don't think any of them are fully comfortable fronting alone. But I need a break and they deserve more autonomy, so we're trying to help them get more used to it and less dependent on me.

Last night, I spontaneously decided to relax my body and invite a headmate (not sure which one) to try and focus on parts of our body and feel more present in the outside world and see to what extent they can move our body if I let them. I started to feel tingling sensations in our jaw, shoulder and head. I often feel these sensations and I reflexively shake these body parts to make the sensations go away, which I thought was just stimming to prevent overstimulation, but I decided to fight the reflexes to see what would happen, and these body parts started moving without my input. It scared me. The shaking always felt like I was fighting for control of my body but I didn't know why. Now I do. I've been stopping headmates from moving our body independently because I didn't realise it wasn't only mine.

I got freaked out and shook them off, but I felt bad so we tried again. They started moving more body parts, but they're clearly not used to moving our body themselves. They gradually spread to more parts of the body and those parts were having very slow movements that turned into shaking. Eventually they might get used to moving our body and be able to do it more easily, but last night they couldn't even make us stand up on their own. Idk if they've ever moved our body before.

So I said "Ok I'll take the right side; you take the left side." This worked. We managed to walk a few steps together but then we both got overwhelmed.

But since then they've kept trying again without me having to do as much to let them, and now random body parts keep moving without me expecting it. It seems they're building up their ability to control muscles a little bit at a time, but I'm scared of losing too much control too quickly. I can't even tell which headmates are doing this. Idk whether it's one of them, all of them or somewhere in between.

It might not even be that new. I always assumed I did certain stims "subconsciously," but maybe that was them. But this doesn't feel like stimming. It feels like they're practicing moving muscles that they're not used to so they can get used to them and build up their ability to control our body. It's freaking me out. Idk what to do.

Like on one hand I think they deserve more autonomy and I need a break, but on the other hand I'm scared because Idk what they're gonna do and Idk if there's a risk of me losing control altogether.

Idk. I think I'm overthinking this. It's just new territory for me and I'm scared.

Uhh, I was thinking.

So, I have a subsystem, parallel systems, and I'm wondering if I'm polymind.

It's like I'm part of a system, but I have isolated subpersonalities that have nothing to do with my systems. Is that possible??

Btw, I feel like, "Wow, what a cool label, I'm going to have one!!" But I promise it's just a coincidence lol

-Isaak, the cool host?

If you were to explain the concept of plurality to a bunch of people who know nothing about it, there is a high chance some people would go "that sounds scary.."

I've come to realize that I feel like such a person

But if they were *given* plurality on top of that

I thought i was handling it an average way, everything seemed ok, but i dont think i even know what I'm doing. I think it's screwing me up much more than i thought..

It feels like I know hardly more about all this being plural stuff than a cis ally who's never experienced gender dysphoria trying to learn about being transgender to support their trans friend. I may know a somewhat decent amount of theory, but there is just no *instinct*

I have no idea if im doing anything right... Am I talking to *every single person* enough amount? Am i making sure that everyone feels comfortable? Should I go out of my way to make sure ive contacted all other headmates that might be hiding and make sure they feel welcome? Are they able to exist and have free will inside the headspace when they're not fronting or in co-con? What about those guys who's only talked once and never again? Should I go and contact them? Am I supposed to talk to everyone and see if i should help them find themselves after forming? To make sure they can feel they can trust me? What if I feel too tired to check on everone? What if I feel tired for 2 months or longer? I cannot just force everyone to cease to exist for who knows how long! And what does it mean if my own memories from earlier syscovery feel so distant and almost alien? That I get emotional walls from my stories and other feelings? But it was still *me*. Am i still me? Am i a clone headmate of myself? It is still even the same me? How long have I been a different person? What happened

I've been told that I shouldn't treat this like ive just become a parent of a 40-member family or that will burn me out. But how else am i supposed to act..? Like, i just don't know any other option on how to behave with this while also assuring everyone's wellbeing... I dont want a single person to feel left out. I don't know if they can exist on their own in headspace and therefore manage themselves. Or maybe it'd make it worse..? It feels like if someone else were to front and take on those responsibilities they'd feel exhausted too. I don't want it, I'd rather feel that way...

I don't know what to do. I cant afford a therapist to help me or figure out how we work or guide me. I feel alone, i feel like i have nobody to talk to, but I'd be too much of a coward to accept a dm. I dont know what to do, i don't want anybody to feel left out or to feel like they have to hide not to hurt me, i want everyone to feel comfortable and happy... I feel tired but it feels like no amouunt of rest or break from system stuff is going to make it ever go away

I wouldn't trade them for anything in the world. Everyone is so nice to me...

i just dont know what to do...

i have no idea what to do...

(This has been on my mind for a few days actually, but some weird emotional walls have been preventing me from decoding what I've been feeling and writing it down. It was really weird... Thank you for reaching the end, advice welcome as always..)

Anyone else never think you had the separate handwriting thing until you started to actually acknowledge what you're writing?

I have a realization moment at least once a day at school where I realize one part of my schoolwork is me and the other is probably A or something😭

Very funny but also removes some of my doubt🥹

We came out to our sister back in March, she was one of the first people to be notified about our syscovery. She was seemingly supportive and understanding at first, especially because our system managed to achieve healthy systemhood through lots of therapy and work, and therefore we were rarely pathologized by friends and family. She and her wife announced they were expecting soon after so I didn't get to see much of her (despite my best efforts), but I'd occasionally send her headmate art and was under the impression that she was still supportive from afar.

She recently hosted a baby shower, in which each attendant was encouraged to decorate a wooden cube for the baby with cookie-cutter-drawings to represent them. We're artists, so with the mothers' permission we ditched the templates and made art to represent us. One side for each headmate, plus an autism creecher + lesbian flag. Our headmates drew themselves in their own style, and tried to make it interesting and stimulating for a developing brain. But, without context, they just appeared to be interesting and goofy drawings without a clear pattern, as there was no labeling to indicate who or what they were.

We later sent our sister a voice note clarifying that this wasn't an attempt to "make things about myself", or even about plurality for that matter. Rather, my headmates have been part of my life for long enough that I consider them to be representative of me and inextricably connected to my identity. On top of this, they wanted this to be an olive branch of sorts for my sister (who you'll recall had been distant due to prepping for maternity) to convey "We're here, and we care about the host and the things that matter to them, so we care about you by extension and we'll be part of your life in whatever measure you're comfortable with if we're needed". I explicitly stated this part in quotes. We got this in reply a couple weeks later:

"Good morning [my name] 🌞 I apologise for taking so long to answer. I was giving it a lot of thought.

First of all, I love you and want to have a relationship with you as my sibling. However, I’m not comfortable engaging with your headmates as separate people, and I’m not willing to participate in treating them as additional family members. I respect that this is how you understand your experience, but I don’t share that perspective.

When it comes to [baby], we have made a decision about the environment we want to create for her as she grows up. We do not want her to be introduced to, or have to interact with, or encouraged to recognise headmates as separate people or as additional aunts. I think that would be very confusing for any baby or child.

I understand that you may feel differently, and hurt by my/our decision. I promise you it comes from a place of love, of wanting you here, of being concerned about your wellbeing and after having done the due research.

We love you and so will [baby] 💕"

To be clear, introducing headmates to my niece was never on the table. And I have no issue with her boundaries on direct interaction. But that aside, what reputable "research" has ever encouraged not acknowledging headmates??? Even if you're looking at it from a disordered perspective, at no point in treatment of dissociative disorders are you supposed to just... not acknowledge headmates. But we've been deemed non-disordered in our plurality by all our mental health professionals. It's so strange and out of left field, especially coming from someone we thought was supportive.

It's worth noting that dissociative disorders are VERY under-researched in our country. In fact, we've heard psychiatrists claim that DID any diagnoses of the like simply do not exist. It's a controversial diagnosis, to put it lightly. My father has confirmed that my sister apparently spoke to colleagues in the medical field (she's an MD) and psychiatrists in her circle (her bestie is a psychiatrist) and they all led her to these conclusions.... but like, none of them know us?? It's an incredibly uninformed opinion scientifically, but also just on a personal level, as this supposed "concern for my well-being" didn't involve talking to me to ask if I was well in the first place. Even if she thought I was completely delusional, my thoughts and experiences still matter if only to understand what's going on. She hasn't bothered to find out.

I'm hurt, to be sure, but I'm not mad. I understand first time motherhood is very messy and stressful, and I've heard that both her and her wife are having very bad insomnia and anxiety. According to everyone who knows us both, this all feels like our plurality was just the lighting rod for their paranoia, so I shouldn't take it personally. I'm trying not to, but it really sucks.

I've already given a thorough reply in which I validate her fears and boundaries but also firmly restate our validity in existence, but conclude that now is possibly the worst time to discuss this for either of us. She agrees and is sorry to have hurt me, though she hasn't elaborated on what led to all this.

Don't know how to feel about this. It's just really exhausting.

For us, we feel a very specific headache: on the right back side of our head, closer to our neck

We have heard other systems with the exact same headaches indicating they are splitting

What about you?