Confusion

[joyless-abyss.livejournal.com]

I am unsure if I am Median or Multiple or not, but being the way I am makes me feels like this sometimes:- Like I am faking it. Like I am a singlet who sub-conciously longs to be multiple and has not only lied to others about this state, but to himself as well. Like I've tricked myself into believing I have many selves. Yet they all seem very real to me - but is that just because I have deluded myself well.

I ask myself these questions often. And I feel angry at myself. And confused. Angry that I could fake this, that I could be so disrespectful (IF I am faking) and confused because it all feels very real to me.

Sometimes months go by without one of my 'others' making an appearance to me, sometimes they just come to say something to me, and other times they are around more than I am.

Occaisionally I even conciously mould a new 'other' from the feel of a person I sense inside myself. Manipulating slightly their looks to suit myself. And quite often when a new 'other' surfaces, we have to actually discuss with this new person what they would like their name to be.

I also know that there are several others which we have been unable to communicate with.

I do experience walk-ins on rare occaisions.

I'm very confused here, and I don't know if we are Multiple, Median or just a deranged Singlet.

I apologise if I have used any terms which are not suitable. We're not quite sure which terms are meant to be used.

We appreciate any feedback if you choose to reply, and I'm sorry if this message is just a waste of your time.

-Andy and Amanda Shortland.

Comments

[emploding.livejournal.com]

i know the feeling...
we are a multiple system, but i go thru periods where i dont believe it, and i believe im making it all up.
it often takes something like me missing a few days and something huge happeneing while im gone, to make me believe myself again.

try not to fit yourself/s into a box. just be you! dont worry about labelling you.

Re:

[joyless-abyss.livejournal.com]

You have no idea how much better I feel for reading that comment. I thought I was the only one who felt like that.

Thank you,
-Andy.

[belisama.livejournal.com]

i/we understand. we go through the same thing. i use to loose time when i was younger. i would have strangers coming up to me downtown talking to me as if i was someone else. now i seem to have a better 'grip'. i have been reclassed as DID. it seems to fit better for who i am now.
i wish we were making all of this up. sometimes we try and tell ourselves that.

if you ever want to talk, i/we are willing.

[joyless-abyss.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have that experience with strangers thinking I'm someone else occaisionally. It can be really frustrating, especially because most of the time I don't lose conciousness when 'others' 'front'.

Re:

[belisama.livejournal.com]

I don't lose conciousness when 'others' 'front' either. not anymore at least.

hey andy

[asrai-d.livejournal.com]

since i've been with my boyfriend i have hardly seen any of the insiders at all. except under periods of stress, and sometimes not even then. i sometimes wonder if i am/was faking it.

but i read somewhere once i don't know if it's real, but this is my experience.\

Re: hey andy

[joyless-abyss.livejournal.com]

That's strange, because since I've been with my girlfriend I haven't had much contact at all with the others in my system, except on rare occaisions.

I guess with some of us we'll never know if it's real or not, but I'm thinking that it's as real as it is to them.

[storyteller2001.livejournal.com]

hi andy and amanda.

we also understand this feeling well. we deal with this really really often. we often have a lot of trouble believing that we are real. that the multiplicity is real. for the most part, for us, that's not because we are not ok with being multiple, per-se, but because if we really are multiple, than that means that the bad stuff was real, and we don't want that to be true. so, we very often go through the i'm bad, i'm stupid, i'm crazy, i'm making it all up, etc. how can i be so mean and say such terrible things when they aren't even true. etc. according to our therepist, she has not met a single multiple (umm...that's an awkward phrase) who doesn't go through that periodically. at least not ones who have dealt with the same types of abuse we have.

oh, and regarding your concern about "making up" details based on a sense you have of someone inside, and discussing what they want their names to be, etc. this is very familiar to us as well. for us, there are some people who don't/can't communicate in words and can only communciate in ideas or images. and many of us do not have a clear self image. especially people who are deeper in. they often do not know what they look like or what their name is, or they may not have a name. and helping them find a name they like/are comfortable with, is often very empowering for them, as it helps them have more of a sense of identity. though that sounds more simplistic than it often is for us.

obviously, we don't know you. we can't say yes you are multiple or no you're not, and we don't know what a median is. we've never heard the term before. we can say that what you describe sounds very similar to the way things are for us. and we feel that multiple is a fairly good term for the way we are.

good luck. you are welcome to email if you want.

and you're post was most definately NOT a waste of our time.

[joyless-abyss.livejournal.com]

Thank you. It's surprising to find out that other multiples seem to be very similar to the way we are. We thought we were alone on that one (mind you, it's not like in the outside world we can just ask another multiple system about it).

It's also pleasing that that post didn't cause any controversy. I was worried that some people would belittle us for it.

i think everyone feels like that

[kaleidescope.livejournal.com]

there are probably multiples somewhere who have never gone through any fear that they were "just making it up," but i haven't heard from them! whereas i've heard tons over and over from people who have felt like that many a time in their lives.

i think it's especially natural given that we're taught all our lives that we don't exist, that everyone is one person in one body and that multiplicity is "highly debated" and "controversial" and whatever other crap. if we hear about it at all.

and a lot of multiples have been abused, which can really fucks up people's ability to accept their own experiences and the evidence of their own senses as real. or valid. or even to accept themselves as valid.

it did make me laugh a little that you said that you actually have to discuss what a new person's name should be sometimes! we don't all come with our own names :) most of us in here, actually, just knew ourselves as ourselves, like someone just knew they were ... well a feisty young tomboy who liked strawberry shortcake (the cartoon character), for example ... and didn't stop to think about how old they were or what their own name was or anything like that until we realized we were multiple. and sometimes those people find their names very naturally as if they had always known them, and sometimes they go through lots of angst and debate before they choose a name.

if you were faking, you'd know. you wouldn't be scared of it. faking is a conscious act. and you know that there are many people in there. and it's okay! and it would even be okay if you decided that you were one single person who'd been somehow confusing something ELSE with being many many people. cause it's all just a process of self-discovery, either way, whether you're one person or many one people :)

Re: i think everyone feels like that

[joyless-abyss.livejournal.com]

Thanks, that makes me feel much better. I liked what you said about self-discovery. I have to agree with that. I personally think we are a multiple system, and that's what's real for us, so maybe we should just stop worrying how real it is to others.

Re: i think everyone feels like that

[kaleidescope.livejournal.com]

yeah! screw everyone else :)

[ahiruko.livejournal.com]

This sounds really familiar ... we were constantly having doubts like that.

After I blacked out in Penn Station and woke up on a train an hour outside of Buffalo with Richard hugging me, crying, and screaming at me never to do that again.

I figure, if we weren't multiple we'd probably not be typing this right now. For us, it's real. There are still questions, but that's not one we really ask ourselves any more.

[joyless-abyss.livejournal.com]

I guess it's just a case of self (selves?) belief when thinking about that question.

Sometimes it feels so real for us, other times it doesn't.

The best way for us to deal with it seems to be just to go along with how things go.

oh yeah and

[kaleidescope.livejournal.com]

i don't know how co-conscious your system is. we are very co-conscious: we generally all have some idea what's going on and what's been going on, and there's rarely just one person out. there's usually at least a bunch of other people close enough to pay attention to what's going on if it gets interesting :) and if they're not saying anything, whoever's out usually doesn't know that they're there. except sometimes if they sort of feel around inside to see :)

but like - i annoy the crap out of everyone else in here cause i feel like i'm always out or around to some degree and I get very self-doubting and decide that i'm the only real person in here cause that's what it ends up feeling like, cause i can't feel what they feel! (usually.) and apparently there are actually a lot of people in here who feel like that, like they're always out and *I'm* just some something in the back of *their* mind. they're just less loudmouthed about it. :)

so you never know - maybe other people in there are around more than you think....
although it doesn't make you any more or less multiple to have other people be around more or less. at least in our opinion!

- dani

Re: oh yeah and

[joyless-abyss.livejournal.com]

We are very co-concious, but mostly fronting it's Andy (the birth host, or whatever phrase fits) in control, and when not it's nearly always his sister Amanda. Most of us share information and experiences, but sometimes not.

Sometimes we don't even know who's out and never even find out. Not even the person who was out. But when that happens we all seem to share conciousness.

[arhuaine.livejournal.com]

I think all multiples feel that way sometimes. I am the one who fronts for well over 50% of the time and so sometimes I wonder if the others in here are even real at all... until something happens to remind me very strongly that yes, they are real, or else there's something going on that's even stranger and less believable than being multiple.

Occaisionally I even conciously mould a new 'other' from the feel of a person I sense inside myself.
That also seems to be a common thing, but I don;t necessarily think it makes those people any less real. I am a mother. I created my daughter out of my own flesh (with a little help from her father) but she is still a real individual. Things you make can still be real.

And quite often when a new 'other' surfaces, we have to actually discuss with this new person what they would like their name to be.
*LOL* We sometimes do that too. Some folk appear already with names but some don't have names so they choose their own, or let us choose. Some, like Secret, Shrimp and The Dancer, have only nicknames.

I do experience walk-ins on rare occaisions
Do they walk-in and stay resident in your system, or do they just appear once and then disappear? If the latter, I'd say it's more likely to be channelling than walk-ins.

I'm very confused here, and I don't know if we are Multiple, Median or just a deranged Singlet
Does it even matter? Those words are just labels anyway, and they mean different things to different people.

Example; I am a walk-in from another world. Does that mean I'm Otherkin (Elf) or Starseed (Pleidian)? In the end it amounts to the same thing. They're just words that someone else invented, things to use as labels to make it easier for other people to understand who/what you are.

Please don't worry about using the "wrong" words, or making mistakes. It honestly doesn't matter. Understanding yourself/selves is a long process of learning. And no it definitely wasn't a waste of time. Because sometimes I feel just the same, and it's nice to know that there is a place to talk about it and not worry about being judged in any way.

[joyless-abyss.livejournal.com]

That sounds very similar to my experience of multiplicity. In the outside world, MY life is MY life, not OUR life (for lack of a better way to put it). More often than not I am the one fronting.

As for walk-ins, I get ones which remain in the system and also ones which walk in once then disappear as well. What is the difference between walk-ins and channeling?

You're right about the labels. After all, they're just labels.

A second question though - what does Starseed mean? That's a term I've never heard of before.

Thank you for your help,
-Andy.

[arhuaine.livejournal.com]

I think the difference between walk-in and channelling is the walk ins are the ones who stay. They are the ones who call your body "home", whereas the channelled ones are just visiting.

Starseed is a term given by parts of the New Age community to describe people whose souls originate on other planets/other worlds. They are aliens in human bodies, many of them are walk-ins too. Some of the ideas they have are a bit loopy, but the basic concept is just the same as otherkin (elves/fae etc in human bodies).

[prettyrazor.livejournal.com]

We, too, have doubted ourselves at times. Becky, who hosted for 16 years while the original host could not, still insists that she made the rest of us up fo attention. We often have newly discovered insiders without names, and we will talk to them and try to help them pick a name. (51 being the best example of this. She is a hyper little 4-year-old who use to run around the system referred to only as "Hey You," and "That Weird Kid," until we started calling her "The 51st Alter" because we discovered her 51st, and then 51 just kind of stuck.)

You're not alone.

[joyless-abyss.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I feel that way. Occaisionally I even have doubts whether I am the original host or not.

Thanks for your support,
-Andy.

[cirape.livejournal.com]

Other comments are much too long to read now. I'm lazy after getting back from school...
Anyway, Diz is sometimes deathly afraid that she's making this all up sometimes (even after discovered she isn't the core or anything that close to it she can't get rid of that fear). We tell her its not true, and she knows it is because its been prooven as false, but she still fears it sometimes. Fear of being alone I think...
Hum, we go through some cycles of awake-ness and asleep-ness of certain peebles, and know others who do. Sometimes more extreem where as one/the core(sometimes) will be the only one awake for awhile.
I dun really know what else to say, yeah? Just figured I'd chip in with yet another "you're not alone" comment.

[joyless-abyss.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your help. It's nice to hear other people's experiences which are so similar to my/our own.

-Andy.

[ninquelote.livejournal.com]

My personal take is that if you were not multiple or median to any degree, you would not feel such a strong pull towards wanting to be so.

Personally, what you say about your group seems perfectly consistent to me with the definition of median, at least with how we originally defined it in Pavilion. It doesn't matter if the other people are up front sometimes only rarely-- what matters is that they exist. Also, there's nothing abnormal about people coming into the system without names (we have a couple people we tagged with names just to make it easier to keep track of them) or about being able to deliberately create people-- despite what therapists and ye olde psychology books might tell you, it's not uncommon to be able to do this.

I can tell you that some of the things you say are very familiar to us, since our main frontrunner (or main at the time) back when we first started to communicate with each other went through a lot of the same things, thinking she was a 'wannabe' and was just doing this because she had friends who were plural and so on. I can also tell you that I think people who've been up front for long periods of time may have a sense of themselves as being the 'main person' when they actually aren't-- I'm not explaining it well, but what I mean by that is that since they've been around for awhile, they've had a chance to establish themselves and become strong as identities, and it's hard for 'new' people to find enough mental strength to nudge them out of the way unless that person deliberately steps aside to allow them time of their own. We know of quite a few other people who've had frontrunners go through the 'can't let go' syndrome after they started to communicate with others in their system. I actually think that it may not be uncommon for some fronters to become control freaks, of a sort, before acknowledging themselves as multiple, because they already have a sense that they're -not- just one person and want to feel they have a grip on who they are at all times. Or that may just have been our experience; your mileage may vary. Hope this helps...

[joyless-abyss.livejournal.com]

That sounds very similar to our experience. We can relate to that in so many ways. Such as, Andy has had much mor opportunity to establish his own identity (being our main fronter for our whole lives) than the rest of us, and even Andy will admit to being a control freak over this sometimes.

[charcoalrain.livejournal.com]

I understand where you're comming from, some of my selves question weather or not multiplicity is really what's going on. I'm the most cohearent persona as well as one of the first. Oneof us (goes by the name of Ace) thinks it's a bunch of BS I (she) made up to pass the time. But seeing as I'm the main personality in our system (refered to by the others as "The Host") I suppose I have the most say in weather or not we are multiple and I almost always believe we are...

But everyone has those days where the lines gert blurry and no one knows what's really going on...

Take care,
Ani & company