multiplicity_archives | (no subject)

I’m sure everyone has read someone’s post on this community or read a comment that made you stop and think, “I don’t believe you.” If you haven’t, either you don’t read the threads very closely or you work very hard not to think critically about anything you read here, because there have been some very outrageous claims made here over the years. (But that’s an entirely different discussion.) I want to know what people think when they come across one of these statements that they just can’t believe.

Do you:

A) Think the person is lying.
B) Think the person is knowingly role playing
C) Think the person believes that they are multiple but is probably unintentionally role playing or some other form of imagination
D) Think the system is lying about the experiences
E) Think the system is knowingly or unintentionally role playing the experiences
F) Think the system is adhering to the community’s cultural norms/trying to fit in
G) Think the system probably honestly believes their claims even though another explanation seems more logical to you
H) Think the system probably started out making things up but has since convinced themselves that their claims are true
I) Worry that you might be making things up too or that someone else might think you are
J) Think something else entirely – please share

Also, do your thoughts change depending on why you can’t believe the statement? For example, is there a difference between someone claiming to do/be something that you think is impossible and someone contradicting themselves or claiming that something happened in real life that could not have happened?

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There are very definite cultural norms within this specific livejournal community and within the multiplicity online community in general. There's a separate set of cultural norms for multiples in the DID-sufferer-support communities both on and off-line.

Nothing brought on this post. Just curious.

Erm, I've also known some very whacked academically slanted systems that read the entirety of Astraea's page and proceeded to attempt to fit their system around whatever was said there, and everyone and everything that deviated from their personal interpretation of the page was "wrong". (no offense to Astraea, but you got some creepy fangirls out there)

*blink* Wowo, I missed this? Were any of these people ever on the community?

BTW: I've also known some RL nutcases who think that they can shake houses and bust lightbulbs by meditating. I mean, the woman was large, so maybe she got herself in a trance and started running around the house, but I strongly doubt that someone could do that. In that case, it's best to nod and agree and then run in the other direction ASAP.

Ah, yeah... When the whole 'toasters' thing comes up, it's not like I haven't had any 'strange experiences' personally, but a lot of the time, people seem more willing to believe that something happened due to their great mental powers or some aspect of being multiple, than that it happened due to an 'mundane' reason. My personal experience is that while a certain percentage of stuff is 'inexplicable,' most reports of such things tend to have mundane explanations. And some people will get very upset if you don't affirm them in this, or suggest an alternate interpretation, which suggests to me that what they're looking for is some kind of ego-stroking; someone to tell them they're powerful and special.

Of course, yeah, community standards are also a part of it. We've been in some places where it seemed to be so taken for granted that multiples all had 'weird experiences,' or more of them than most people, that some of us ended up feeling compelled to stretch our interpretations of certain thngs to make it look like something psychic or spiritual was going on. When we weren't at all sure it was.

We've been accused of being 'intolerant' of people who self-report a lot of toaster stuff. It's not so much that I lack tolerance for it as that a) there's a difference between saying "I can't explain this" and bragging, and b) I believe overemphasizing it is potentially destructive to people who have never had any such experiences, and might worry that they need them in order to be a 'real multiple.'

TGM

Selene's actually having the opposite problem. Attempting various spiritual things and writing just about everything off with mundane explanations even if it might not be caused by something mundane. She needs lessons from these people in how to loosen up maybe :P

(though hearing some of those stories, maaaaybe not.)

Heh, we've had the same problem, really-- I think we just ran into too many people who assumed that EVERYTHING was because of their psychic superpowers, or that if they saw something it must be true, so we got into the habit of trying to find 'alternate explanations' for everything. But that can definitely sabotage you when you're involved in something that requires a certain amount of non-rational intuition and taking things at face value, if you keep second-guessing yourself. We're still not entirely sure how to 'solve' that, except that I think a lot of the people who described their amazing powers to us didn't even consider the possibility of other explanations.