Roots, causes, beginnings.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

Some recent comments made me wonder about this, so I thought I'd ask all of you a couple of questions. This is just idle curiosity, so feel free to ignore.

How old were you when you became multiple? (Or have you been one since birth?)

Was there some kind of triggering event, good or bad, that caused it, or was a catalyst for it?

Was it a gradual process, or something very sudden?

Were you aware of it right away, or did you become aware later? If you became aware later, what brought it to your awareness?

I'll answer myself, just to start things off.

I had the beginnings of everything when I was thirteen or so, but I didn't actually develop other personas until I was around 19, and none of them were strong enough to actually do much, until I was 23. (I'm currently 28.)

I had two triggers. One was a negative experience, that happened when I was 13. I don't generally go into detail about it without good reason, but I was left with a memory, and a thought, that got stuck in my head, and I hated dwelling on it, it was awful and depressing, and miserable, and I wanted to be happy. So I made a little mental "loop" to help me get rid of the evil thought. I pictured something I thought was pleasant to replace it. A purple oriental dragon, in this case, (I'm crazy about dragons!) which I imaginied flying in and burning up the unpleasant thought, and then settling down in my mind, so I could just visualize how graceful and shiny and beautiful the dragon was, rather than dwelling on something negative. Since I spent a lot of time thinking about this dragon, it started to get a little life, and very gradually evolved into a protective Guardian figure, but it never really gained any independance until the second event happened, which was my discovering the internet! I went off the college, and found computers, and the net, and chatrooms, and specifically fantasy chat rooms, where I could play a character, and let my imagination, and all the various facets of my personality that don't generally see much action out to play. So I made up all these characters, and played, and had fun, but a couple of the characters really took on a life of their own, particularly in chat rooms, where they could speak through me, and I started picturing little dialogues with them, and pretty soon I had these personalities running around my head.

So I developed quite gradually from a total singleton to a more or less median state, (and was, of course, aware of this progression the whole time,) where I have personalities other than me in here, but they're all really sub-sets of me, characters and aspects that I talk to. I've been told I'll inevitably develop further into a full multiple state where I will become just one of many, or vanish entirely, but I don't believe this to be true. While I still sometimes find new personas, The way we work together and interact with each other has very much stabilized, and hasn't changed any since very shortly after the first of them appeared, so I don't anticipate it changing much in the future either. (And so far nobody has ever fronted but me, though some of the others will speak in chat rooms or IMs, which is kind of interesting I think.)

Anyhow, how about you guys? Any thoughts on the subject?

Comments

[kiya]

How old were you when you became multiple? (Or have you been one since birth?)

I have honestly no idea. I suspect that I'm a natural median whose plurality was made more distinct by trauma. Part of the problem was that I was severely dissociative for some time after the trauma (an assault); while I believe myself to be the same entity as beforehand, there is a two-year or so discontinuity in there, and that's more a faith than a fact.

There are distinct memories from before the assault that indicate something like my plural state to me; whether or not that was actual plurality or proto-plurality I have no idea. I find it worth noting some of the issues that created the situation in which I was damaged are identical with the way my crisis handling breaks down into headless committee meetings, though.

Were you aware of it right away, or did you become aware later? If you became aware later, what brought it to your awareness?

So in my mid-teens I had reason to want to come up with an evocative handle. And so I thought about it for a bit, and came up with one. And I thought about it, and said to myself, "Well, that's incomplete; it doesn't address this." So I came up with another one. And had the same issues with it. I eventually generated about a dozen of these nicknames, got frustrated about my inability to get something that felt complete, and would occasionally sign off notes with one or the other of them if I felt it conveyed useful information.

About ten years later I encountered netdancer on the usenet group alt.callahans. They talked about their system freely, and were my first encounter with the concept of functional plurality. At some point they mentioned a friend described as "singtuple", and I said, "Well, that's interesting."

Somewhere in there I had an experience that I could not systematise without using a multiple system paradigm: an emotional state complete with significant biofeedback suddenly snapped into nonexistence with a shift in personae. At which point I emailed netdancer and said, "Um, hi, could you give me tips for some resources?"

So in some sense I've known I was plural in some fashion since I was fifteen.

In another sense I didn't figure it out before I was twenty-five.

I'm occasionally a little slow on the uptake.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

That's interesting. I know a lot of people where the finaly "catalyst" to them figuring things out, or defining things, or whatever, was discovering others like them. Makes me wonder what would happen to somebody multiple who never encountered others at all?