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Greetings to all the systems in this course. I/we are going by “Chris&” which is short for “Chris and company”, as we have not yet picked a system name. We’re a 51 years old polyamorous plural mildly autistic male with multi-gendered headmates. We figured out we were a system in approximately 2003 through listening to our own thoughts looking for what was going on with us, because we had “watched our body do things like it was a movie” a few times over the years, as well as other kinds of behavior we were confused by. We didn’t know to do this until we reconnected with someone that admitted they were “multiple” that we had known years earlier, and whom we are honored to still be connected with today. We have not yet been diagnosed with dissociative disorder yet, but there’s no question — we either have DID or something along those lines.
We still aren’t sure how many headmates we have, because there are a number of us that are “below deck” where we don’t have “visibility” of them, don’t hear their thoughts, and only occasionally get glimpses of them. A good rough guess is that we have at least 20 headmates, and at least one “headmate” is a subsystem. Our system generally switches between headmates very fluidly, such that it is not uncommon for a switch to occur mid-sentence as we’re speaking. For plurals that are mindful and aware, we have a number of known “tells” where who we are can be observed in our physical expression as well as our voice and mannerisms, and we have generally have distinct handwriting between headmates.
Our system has evolved quite a lot in recent years doing various plural classes (such as this one) as well as therapy for PTSD. We slowly “onboarded” a number of headmates over a period of years from “stowaways” to “passengers” and then some of us to “staff” and to “bridge officers” running our “ship”. Our officers tend to “blend” a lot now, where several headmates are co-fronting at once, and this has led to a new kind of fluidity that has yielded a much more resilient system and has made things really interesting for us in new ways that we would not have thought possible. We generally “pass as singular” around singletons that are not plural-aware.
During the Jitsi calls for the course we will most likely have Gunther, Chris, Toby, and “Mr X” and/or Sakker blending together at different times. Chris will be notable as having a calm voice, being introverted, and avoiding cursing (where the rest of us is willing to when it feels appropriate). Gunther will be notable as being more flamboyant, animated, and extroverted. Mr X is notable for speaking with a more gruff voice — he is a system protector today but used to act as an internal persecutor. Toby is more passionate and feels emotions stronger than most of the rest of us can. All of our headmates are special to us and we all do our best to care for one-another and keep ourselves safe and content.
We find ourselves most comfortable being around and speaking with other plurals, which we now do several times a week. We appreciate the opportunity to communicate with all of you as part of this course.
Just one suggestion at the moment: in the “BT First Session Follow-Up” there’s a mention of “We will try sharing our Otter feed”, and I think it would be useful to mention what an “Otter feed” is — that it provides a running transcription of the voice chat in “real time”.
We’ve taken some time to contemplate “mourning singularity” after the discussion on Sunday and we’ve read the forum posts. This is still a tough but good question and we’re continuing to consider it.
Something we’d like to add to the discussion that we’ve been thinking of lately is that we’ve decided that “it’s important to respect every part of our system(s)”. That is, we’ve come to the realization that every part of our system _exists for a reason_ and therefore we feel it’s important to take every part of our system into account in terms of major decisions in our life, and that this is likely something useful to consider for other plural systems. We are not the originator of this idea, but because we now use this idea for our decisions it leads to some interesting ramifications, including the specific question about “mourning singularity”.
When it comes to “morning singularity”, there’s parts of us that are able to “act singular” and enjoy “passing for singular” despite the fact that we know we’re not. There are other parts of us that would much rather “be out about being plural”. Despite this, it’s possible to be either thing that different times, and that’s part about what being plural is about. We ARE different things at different times, depending on the circumstances. That’s both the simultaneous benefit AND drawback of being plural.
We know we’re plural and nobody we know of in our system is in denial about that. Our close friends and family all know we’re plural. At the _same time_ we also don’t go around broadcasting that we’re plural to everyone we meet (unless we _really_ feel safe, and then we might), and we might even decide not to be “out” about being plural at work unless we find a reason it could be helpful to do so.
There are (generally) things to mourn about being plural, such as the fact that for tramagenic plurals, we/they were traumatized with no refuge. Simultaneously there are some interesting benefits to plurality, because if we have internal communication between headmates then we have a number of perspectives to look at things from, and that’s very valuable in terms of decision making as well as helping our headmates feel more secure — “we are not alone”. We have help.
From the point of view of “wanting to be singular” plurality is in the way and so not having it feels like a loss. If a system wants that back, it might be possible after a lot of therapy for “final fusion” but there’s about an 80% chance of “splitting” again later if there is any traumatic event later. From that point of view there’s been a huge loss.
From the point of view of “being plural and proud”, we’ve survived the trauma in a way in which the trauma was compartmentalized such that we were able to survive in a way in which we later had more choice of direction for our lives, rather than the trauma leading to a “singular” type of mental disorder. And now we’ve got internal company and friends to help with the work of running our shared life.
And both of these perspectives — wanting something we’re not, and being proud of something we are — can be true at the same time. We have the choice, and we can choose different perspectives at different times. And we can be conflicted and confused about all of this too.
There are systems where trying to “pass for singleton” may not be possible, and we recognize this. And depending on the circumstances that may or may be something hard and something more to mourn. [And we were there sometimes. Life can be hard.]
At the moment most of our system is choosing to be “plural and proud” and yet “act like we’re singular” when we’re in groups of singletons. It will be interesting to see how long that will work and whether we make a different decision on that in the long-term, but that’s how we’re choosing to operate at present. And so we’re very comfortable being part of plural groups and being “out and proud”, and at the same time we’re also comfortable being with singletons and simply not saying that we’re not a singleton. Part about being plural is its a tool that can help us “blend in”, and so with that knowledge we’re respecting our system’s privacy and dignity about our plurality, and we’ll see how that goes.
OOOH —someone pointed out the relationship between Ripley & Newt in Aliens. Great example!
The example of Newt in “Aliens” (movie from 1986) is good. For anyone that hasn’t seen the movie — the basic gist is that Newt was part of a colony that had been invaded by alien creatures, and she survived by hiding in ventilation ducts. The point was that she was meant to be there, yet she was a “stowaway” as far as the military personnel were concerned when they were first searching the area for “intruders”.
What we’re most seeking form this course is additional connection and understanding of our own system. We have never yet made a system map but we might have enough system connectivity to be able to ‘ping’ for answers to be able to start making one.
Greetings. We’re currently going by “Chris&” to stand for “Chris and company” as we haven’t chosen a system name yet. This name is proving to be a bit more confusing than we would like because we have a system member that goes by the name “Chris” which appears to be a subsystem, and thus “Chris” is a “Chris&” himself. Someone in my system is wondering whether a name of “Chris&&” would be logical to denote this. we’ve known we’re a system for about 18 years.
We don’t yet know “how many” we have in our system, as it’s an ongoing process of identifying new headmates as they reveal themselves to our system. Sometimes we seek them, other times we simply “work with what we’ve got”. We’ve got a group of 6 headmates that regularly front that could be considered the “bridge officers” and/or crew, we’ve identified a few others that have fronted very rarely that could be considered “passengers”. (We’re currently avoiding using the term “stow-aways” for other rarely seen headmates, because that term would imply that someone wasn’t meant to be in the system, and we’re “feeling” our system object when we go to use that term.)
Our internal headspace has kind of a “spaceship” feel to it, but lately we (those of us that front) haven’t felt connected to the internal headspace. We’re starting to get “bodily feelings” from anxiety back from the subsystem(s) such that we might be able to start mapping connections between headmates, and that’s where it makes sense for us to take this course.
— Chris&&
“My Courses” link fixed 2020-01-04 at 21:45.
Thanks very much Crisses 😉 Much better
Now the list of classes actually comes up.
“My Orders” link fixed also — now it shows what classes has been ordered instead of an “Instructors” page.Section “1.5 More About Spoons has an odd sentence in a bullet point:
“o Spoon Theory doesn’t address the quality of spoons in use — just the quality and how they are spent.”
I think one of the “quality” words is meant to be “quantity” (but I’m not sure which one :-P)
When I go to “My Courses” under my user after logging in, the website doesn’t seem to show Better Spoons — instead what comes up is a “Become a Teacher” page for Instructors. So in order to get into Better Spoons I had to list all of the classes, find the UF: Developing Better Spoons class. From there I was able to work in the class, but getting there seems a little awkward. Figured I’d let y’all know.