Multiplicity

Hi! Don't worry about feeling like your whole system is fake. I think lots of multiple systems, if not every single one that's ever been, has felt like they were faking it and making it up. We certainly have had our days when we felt like that!
Elaq

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cirape.livejournal.com

Diz thinks she's making everything up sometimes, but we reassure her and stuff. It doesn't always work, but there are enought times when she's far enought from control that its obvious she's not making shit up, so that helps.
I figure it's prolly the same way for you,y eah? Or atleast most multiple systems, but I dun really know.
Hi tho *wavies*

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I just followed someone's info page link to this group so I'm brand new here to, but I can already jump in to say "yeah me too!"

The funny thing is my shrink says it IS all made up but with a damned good reason. It was the only way I could survive what happened to me.

By "making up" ie using my mind to fully see, hear, and even get to know all the others in my head, I could just "take off." when all the bad shit started.

since it wasn't happening to "me" I didn't have to remember or feel any of it. Now that my others aren't "needed" to protect me, "they" still want to live life ie take control from me and cause me to lose time. It is still my mind trying to honor "them" for the harshness they went through for me.

But just because you "made it all up" doesn't mean it is less serious than it is. It is a coping devise that has turned in on you, causing times when you have no recalection of where you were or what you were doing. Damned unsettleing at least and unacceptable to mst of us.

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pengke.livejournal.com

No offense but we're not made up. We're not the fictitious delusional creation of one of us. We're real actual people. We just happen to share the same body.

Having doubts is normal in a society that teaches us from very young that only one person can be in each body. Having doubts doesn't mean that any of us are less real. The fact that more than one person in a single system often has the same doubts is proof of that.

You can think that everyone in your system is the product of your mind creating protective delusions but don't apply that belief to everyone else on the list.

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I was not trying to make it seem that anyone was delusional or a delusion. I was just trying to say that the others in us WERE created by the host AS YOUNG CHILDREN when we stepped away from our body and saw the child still standing there acting and reacting to a totaly unacceptable and in many cases life threatening situations. that's why I put in ALL the quote marks. I appologize if my words were offensive to you or any one else.

absolutly doubts of it all being real are very common. I still have them myself. Especially since I gained co-conciousness.

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^We've known several groups that say they started out as one person and deliberately created the others. "Seeing yourself" doing things and it's someone else in your system is also not an across the board thing but it is definitely some people's reported experience. So we take their word for it. There is nothing less or more valid about that.

I thought it was clear that you didn't say that everybody who is multiple has such an origin story, but that you did. No problemo.

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yeah I was definately talking about my *own* experiance, especialy since I've never known anyone else's system or how they came to be. I can only speak from my own experiance, and prospective.

Let's get that str8 right from the start. I'm not here to tell anyone anything about how they should live, or even see things. Since *NO ONE* can speak for another and speak their exact sentiment that would be pretty darned haughty of me to try such a thing.

All I wanted to do was relay what my shrink said to *ME* when I told her *I* was afraid *I* was making this all up in my head.

It was actually only suposed to let the person who wrote the post know that I had felt the same way and had even taken the question to my shrink. and that even after 12 years of therapy I still had doubts.

That was all I swear

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That was all we saw.

Who is that guy in your icon?

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that's me. well my head.

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Hey, don't worry about it. She didn't take it as you trying to tell her who she was or anything other than just trying to describe your own experience. She's generally pretty good about that sort of thing.

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sethrenn.livejournal.com

The "but what if I'm just making this up?" issue is a hard one, and I think it's something that all multiples/plurals/whatever-you-call-it struggle with at some point in their lives. Because there is no universal litmus test, no machine that you can hook your brain up to that goes "ping! Okay, you're real."

I think the answer has to be sought individually by each system; there is no one universal consolation. For us, the times when we feel most powerfully that we are real and individual and seperate people are when we're together, when I can feel ^Ruka's or ^Azu's mental presence leaning against mine as a distinct and tangible entity-- but some systems prefer to have no co-presence at all, because they find it to detract from their sense of individuality.

It's a difficult question without an easy answer. I can see how your shrink was trying to console you, but I can also see how some people could have interpreted her statement as offensive, as affirming the fear that you really were all made up. But at the same time, if it's an interpretation that works for you and affirms each other's reality, if you can't find one that serves you better, go for it.

-Anthea

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Interestingly enough that's part of the story that My didn't let Gilia tell. How we apparently created ourselves. At least that is one theory we have. Another is that we actually were multiple for a long time and the only thing we "created" was an intelligent organization for the system. Either way we're now deffinitely multiple. Even if My doubts it sometimes.

And Hi. I'm one of My's alters... Morgil. Nice to meet some more people who can soncievably understand us!

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OK never mind

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Great icon!

Our experience is that we were around from the beginning but just had, as you said, different operating systems, some of which worked better than others. It depended what situation we were in.

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You might like some of my other ones too then... ;)

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I might swipe that and use it for one of my named icons in AIM. ;)

I just started using pictures of Duo because that's what I look like, although I don't dress in black or wear clerical collars. That's more Andy's kind of thing *ducks*

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I actually like him because he reminds me massively of myself and I've actually adopted a few of his habits just because I thought they were such a cool touch on an angel of death that I'd just steal them for myself...

Plus his look is pretty damn easy to pull off except for the super-long hair...

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sethrenn.livejournal.com

As far as we can remember, there have always been other people in here. But aside from that, there are some people as well who were deliberately created-- to do a certain job, to handle school and interaction because the main fronter(s) at the time were struggling with it, there are any number of reasons why people may be created in a system. And I think it's a lot more common than psychologists give credit for, to have system members with different origins.

I guess in all the other systems I've observed, regardless of how they've reported their history to me, the conclusion I've come to and try to abide by is that origins don't matter. Whether someone was created for school, to endure abuse, to give the earth world a 'normal' person, or someone who came out of a story, nobody has the right to say that people with such beginnings are any less real than those who were born into the body. If they can grow and change, if they have all the emotions a normal outside person would have, if they can respond and react and interact with others and learn, then they're a person-- and that's all there is to it. For me, I will not qualify anyone as being real, not real, delusional, or so on, based on their origins. A person's a person, and all are entitled to equal respect.

Oh, btw, since we haven't met before, hi-- I'm Anthea, one of the council leaders for Amorpha system. I can't speak for everyone in my group, but I know that the idea that origins don't matter in terms of whether or not you qualify as a 'real person' is definitely shared by pretty much the whole group. So no one's offended over on our side. :D Just wanted to make sure there was no misunderstanding here...

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i guess i'd need to explain more...

i don't know... maybe what i'm worried about is whether we're actually multiple or if we evem exist at all... i'm doubting the existence of my entire system... and all of our personalities...

i don't know. my therapist thinks its all just an elaborate thing i do for no apparent reason... tht i'm really entirely normal but just have an overactive imagination or something... but then he admits to not knowing what he thinks about multiples at all or if its all just faked. but he doesn't say that that's what he thinks... just that he doesn't really know what to think since he's never encountered something like that before.

but i always had identity problems and problems with memory loss so... i don't know. i am depressed alot and i guess that sometimes i just doubt whether i really exist or not. but still... if i'm not real who in the system is? i'm out more often than anyone else... so sometimes i think none of us are real.

sometimes even on the outside people don't even notice or react to me. i'll say something or do something that they should hear or see but they don't. lately when that happens i'll even say outloud 'i must be invisible or something'. i've only had two people ever hear me say that.

so i don't know what my problem is. i just don't know if anything's real anymore...

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pengke.livejournal.com

I can think of a couple of reasons why you might feel unreal. Not saying any of them are right but they're something to think about.

Being constantly overlooked and ignored can play with your mind. It may be that your feelings of unreality stem primarily from that. You could try being louder and more insistent that people acknowledge you when you're talking. This might help stop them from ignoring you.

You might be dissociating especially if the feelings of unreality disapate after a time then come back. Since you're seeing a shrink you might equate dissociation with switching but that's not the case.

The feelings of reality might also stem in part from your therapist. I noticed in your post that you included the possibilities that you're the real one and that none of you are real but not the possibility that all of you are real. Could you be interpreting your therapist's belief that everyone in your system is a product of your imagination combined with the fact that they're as real as you are to mean that therefore you must not be real?

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i guess that could be part of it. the counselor isn't really sure what to make of it and i since he doesn't know what to think maybe he's just sorta avoiding it all or something. it might sorta be my fault because i told him i didn't feel like it was something that was a problem... because i didn't want him to try to 'fix' it.

but it does make me feel like i'm a little less than real when he ignores who i am and who we are. same as our parents. they don't know how to deal with it either so they just go on treating it like it isn't true. like things are just the same as they always were. but they aren't. even my brother doesn't talk to me as much as he used to.

i just wish i were back at college where a few people actually understood some and some could even tell who i was at any given time and noticed when we switched out and such. it really helped me feel more real.

thank you for what you said. i think its helped me work some things out. *hug*

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sethrenn.livejournal.com

Yeah. Having people, especially someone who's getting paid to ostentibly help you, doubt your reality, is a real mindfuck. If it were me, I'd ditch your counselor and find a different one who believes you're seperate people, not just one person with an overactive imagination (god I hate that shit). But again, that choice is up to you.

As for parents, well, we're not out to our family because... let's face it; our own parents have a track record of being somewhat delusional when it comes to what's going on with us. What they want to see is a 'normal' person, and they tend to pull the wool over their eyes a bit when it comes to any evidence that doesn't fit with that idea, or when our behavior can't be dismissed under their prior conclusion that we're merely 'eccentric.'

So if you felt like you were different people in college, when you had friends who understood, and most of the doubt is recent and probably engendered by people around you openly disbeliving in it or trying to pretend you're all one person, then without knowing anything else, my opinion would be coming down in favor of the side that says you're real. Being doubted, especially for a system that's just getting its bearings, can really pull the mat out from under you in a lot of ways.

~Azusa, for amorpha

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