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dadaisme
Most people have a single congruent identity spread out across their brain. It's a complex experience in itself, and you can feel disconnected from or confused about it, especially if you're neurodivergent. Some therapy techniques divide the self into multiple parts so it's easier to understand the conflicts that arise within (think id, ego and superego, conscious awareness vs. the subconscious, Internal Family Systems therapy, or even the portayal of emotions as little separate selves in the movie Inside Out which btw is a movie used for children's therapy.)
Some people, however, experience having two or more identities (plurality). So, what is the difference between experiencing one complex, multi-dimensional self, vs. multiple selves?
INTRODUCING DISSOCIATIVE BARRIERS
The way you behave might differ from every social context you find yourself in, like when you're at work vs. in a friend group. Everybody experiences that. It mainly boils down to how comfortable you feel in that environment, threat levels (ex: risk of losing social prestige), etc. Each alter in a plural system also experiences such variants in behavior.
System: How people who experience plurality call the collective of their identities, and are called by singlets (non-systems). Basically a word to refer to the sum of the selves within a single brain.
Alter: One of the ways systems call individual selves. Another more informal term is "headmate". Basically, every self in a system is an alter/headmate.
Another common experience is having alter-egos (not as a synonym for alter) like showman personas, dom or sub identities created for kink play, and the child self that age-regressors experience when regressed. These type of "alternative personalities" aren't plural experiences by themselves, but they COULD be. Notice that these alter-egos can arise spontaneously, be consciously crafted or a mix of both (by nurturing the development of an alter ego, for example: imagine a youtuber starting their show persona by simply exaggerating some of their traits for jokes and then start consciously building on it, by giving it a fictional backstory, for example).
Plurality = having two or more senses of self with dissociative barriers between them.
A dissociative barrier keeps you from feeling like you are also the other personality(ies) that exists in your brain.
Let's see some examples.
Imagine a person named Carrie who age regresses, for any particular reason. When their mind locks in that regressed state, they feel like a 5 year old. The experience of age regressing often feels as close as "swimming in the fountain of youth" can get to real life. So, let's say that Carrie loves horror, but in their regressed state they feel scared about horror media in a not-good way and avoid it. Adult Carrrie has anxiety, but when they regress it subsides so much it might be almost non-existent. Regressed Carrie even talks differently, in a way that's more similar to how children think and speak, and has trouble understanding/assimilating walls of text or complex sentence structure, unlike their usual self.
So, as you can see, regressed Carrie is quite different from regular Carrie, so much that even brain scan tests could probably detect such differences.
Is Carrie plural? Or are grown-up Carrie and little Carrie part of the same self?
The only correct answer is:
Only Carrie themself can determine whether their experience is plural or not. It will boil down to whether they feel such a striking disconnection from their regressed self to believe they are experiencing a dissociative barrier. If Carrie feels a dissociative barrier, then trying to assimilate the two parts as simply two sides of the same self will cause them distress and discomfort; it'll feel wrong.
I'll give another example. As I have stated in my profile, we're a system. There are a few alters witnessing and participating in the making of this post, while others are "active somewhere in the brain" and we have quite a few alters who have for such a long time that we're questioning if they have "dissolved". (I'll explore these topics in a future post.)
So, now I'll speak of myself as the self that I experience, aka as an alter, the alter who's currently writing this post.
My name is Dmitri, I'm my own person, and I'm separate from most of my headmates in such a strong way that it literally feels like the only thing keeping us from us being actual separate people, is our lack of separate physical bodies.
One difference between me and someone else in here is that I'm more chill and introverted while my headmate (and friend!) Vera is extroverted. Vera could very well make us interact with lots of people and make lots of new friends, but shey's extremely limited by the existence of other alters that, unlike me (I just let shem do shir thing lol) disagree with her actions (because of social anxiety, misanthropy, etc), and the "social battery" that inevitably drains quicker.
I have my own persona for exploring kink. lmao
That persona is a part of me; unlike my headmates, whom are not me. He's just me playing pretend.
That's it for part one, we've barely scraped the top of this massive iceberg. Thank you for reading.
have a wonderful day and drink lots of yoei (NL, nonbinary love)
Some people, however, experience having two or more identities (plurality). So, what is the difference between experiencing one complex, multi-dimensional self, vs. multiple selves?
INTRODUCING DISSOCIATIVE BARRIERS
The way you behave might differ from every social context you find yourself in, like when you're at work vs. in a friend group. Everybody experiences that. It mainly boils down to how comfortable you feel in that environment, threat levels (ex: risk of losing social prestige), etc. Each alter in a plural system also experiences such variants in behavior.
System: How people who experience plurality call the collective of their identities, and are called by singlets (non-systems). Basically a word to refer to the sum of the selves within a single brain.
Alter: One of the ways systems call individual selves. Another more informal term is "headmate". Basically, every self in a system is an alter/headmate.
Another common experience is having alter-egos (not as a synonym for alter) like showman personas, dom or sub identities created for kink play, and the child self that age-regressors experience when regressed. These type of "alternative personalities" aren't plural experiences by themselves, but they COULD be. Notice that these alter-egos can arise spontaneously, be consciously crafted or a mix of both (by nurturing the development of an alter ego, for example: imagine a youtuber starting their show persona by simply exaggerating some of their traits for jokes and then start consciously building on it, by giving it a fictional backstory, for example).
Plurality = having two or more senses of self with dissociative barriers between them.
A dissociative barrier keeps you from feeling like you are also the other personality(ies) that exists in your brain.
Let's see some examples.
Imagine a person named Carrie who age regresses, for any particular reason. When their mind locks in that regressed state, they feel like a 5 year old. The experience of age regressing often feels as close as "swimming in the fountain of youth" can get to real life. So, let's say that Carrie loves horror, but in their regressed state they feel scared about horror media in a not-good way and avoid it. Adult Carrrie has anxiety, but when they regress it subsides so much it might be almost non-existent. Regressed Carrie even talks differently, in a way that's more similar to how children think and speak, and has trouble understanding/assimilating walls of text or complex sentence structure, unlike their usual self.
So, as you can see, regressed Carrie is quite different from regular Carrie, so much that even brain scan tests could probably detect such differences.
Is Carrie plural? Or are grown-up Carrie and little Carrie part of the same self?
The only correct answer is:
Only Carrie themself can determine whether their experience is plural or not. It will boil down to whether they feel such a striking disconnection from their regressed self to believe they are experiencing a dissociative barrier. If Carrie feels a dissociative barrier, then trying to assimilate the two parts as simply two sides of the same self will cause them distress and discomfort; it'll feel wrong.
I'll give another example. As I have stated in my profile, we're a system. There are a few alters witnessing and participating in the making of this post, while others are "active somewhere in the brain" and we have quite a few alters who have for such a long time that we're questioning if they have "dissolved". (I'll explore these topics in a future post.)
So, now I'll speak of myself as the self that I experience, aka as an alter, the alter who's currently writing this post.
My name is Dmitri, I'm my own person, and I'm separate from most of my headmates in such a strong way that it literally feels like the only thing keeping us from us being actual separate people, is our lack of separate physical bodies.
One difference between me and someone else in here is that I'm more chill and introverted while my headmate (and friend!) Vera is extroverted. Vera could very well make us interact with lots of people and make lots of new friends, but shey's extremely limited by the existence of other alters that, unlike me (I just let shem do shir thing lol) disagree with her actions (because of social anxiety, misanthropy, etc), and the "social battery" that inevitably drains quicker.
I have my own persona for exploring kink. lmao
That persona is a part of me; unlike my headmates, whom are not me. He's just me playing pretend.
That's it for part one, we've barely scraped the top of this massive iceberg. Thank you for reading.
have a wonderful day and drink lots of yoei (NL, nonbinary love)
