Hello.

[taka-kitsune.livejournal.com]

My name's Ariel...
and I'm not quite sure what I am.

I don't know if I count as a "multiple" or not. Here's my attempt to explain what goes on in my head:
I have a lot of very distinct... personas? Is that the right word? They each have their own personalities, emotions, opinions, past-life histories, talents and moods. Even things like gender and (dare I say it) species change between people. Some of them even suffer from mental illness outside the whole.
Yet all of them are included within a single "I." When I switch "people," there is a "me" that is switching modes. I have everyone's memories, and the like, though the memories I naturally associate things with are the memories of the "person" I am at the time. I can usually consciously change between, but a lot of times it sort of shifts according to what's going on, or who would be the most interested in what's happening. Sometimes I don't really have any control at all over who I am.
Re-reading this, the words really aren't explaining it that well. I'm not exactly the most articulate of "us," but... well... I'm who's here.
So am I multiple? Is this a "system" even though there is only one consciousness? It's just hard to figure out, sometimes, how I can be so many distinct individuals, and yet all part of a whole. I don't even know what to call them.
us.
me.

Comments

[andrianna.livejournal.com]

I can completely understand what you are saying and trying to explain, as I am in the exact same boat as you are!!
When I explain to ppl how I "work"... I say that I have multiple personas. Occasionally someone will be "at front", and there will be Others of Us that are paying attention. We all have the same memories, but like you... they are associated with different personas. Very, very, very rarely do We lose memory of what has gone on while someone else has been "at front". (And that has only happened w/two of Us.)
We also have the ability to shift at will... and sometimes not. We have also learned how to "share" the body... one of Us can be using the hands, while someone else is speaking. It's odd at times. To the point where new personas have been "born" from certain "alliances" working so closely together so often.
I think it's hard for someone else to "define" the words that We use to describe how We work....

~Andri'

I relate

[gia1977.livejournal.com]

I relate to all you say here. I used to say mine were emotions based, but now I see that its a combination of emotions with age differences and a whole big deal of memories. I had always said I was an odd creatures and an odd person being very complex. They seem satisified with it and I don't have to explain anything. Although, I will, if I'm ever asked, but they just don't ask.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Is the "I" a person also, or an overall monitoring? We used to think we were an "I" with multiple personas also.

If the "I" is a person, you could be median. Could they live on or get on in life if you died or couldn't function for any reason?

[taka-kitsune.livejournal.com]

I want to say yes. We were around before we were me, after all. If that makes any sense.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

See my response to the Myrai, below. Sounds as if that's just the way your system is organised. I would count that as multiple rather than median. Particularly the "we were around before we were me" comment; that sounds like Jay, the frontrunner I mention in that post.

By the way, welcome to the community.

Hm...

[myrai.livejournal.com]

Er, if this doesn't sound too stupid, could you explain more what you mean by an "overall monitoring"? Because it sounds like maybe something we might have, if I understood you correctly...

Re: Hm...

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

What we thought was a central "I" turned out to be a combination of a strong frontrunner (in place because of demands about normality) and a monitoring mechanism that recorded everything and put it in a common knowledge bank. Anyone could draw on it -- this way, no one came to the front unable to do necessary tasks, and we didn't forget things as multiples are stereotypically suppposed to do.

This is why we thought we were not multiple. What we were, was well organised.

A median situation would be one in which there is a central "I" who is a person, who is always there, and without whom the system couldn't run. That frontrunner I spoke of was willing and able (with effort) to be sent away from the front position, and others take his place; he is not key to the life or functioning of this system. If he were, we'd be median.

[kiya]

You sound a bit like me-us; we're median/midcontinuum.

The comments in this recent post of mine have some links you might find worth reading and some discussion of how it works for us.

[pengke.livejournal.com]

Sometimes there is a single sense of "I" but the people who are "I" changes. For example, person A is sharing the front with person B but they both have the same experience of "I am doing this" regardless of which person is performing the action.

[shadowechoes.livejournal.com]

Just wondering if when you say that you all have different species, if you(s) are therians? We are all therians and have many different species/phenotypes too.. although We haven't met many other multiples besides our mate(s) who are are also therian. :) We also vary in gender in some cases and also mental illnesses. For the most part We have almost complete co-consciousness, which means We almost always share memories.

~Ash for the ShadowEchoes

[36.livejournal.com]

That's very interesting... when we first realised we were multiple it was simply "oh, there are several of us, that single sense of 'I' must be wrong then", after that we spent the first few months learning to ignore the faulty sense of 'I' and rigging up something which allowed us to accurately follow our life rather than constantly struggling against incorrect reportage.

The concious mind has been proven to be a story-telling mechanism and one which is extrememly unreliable and which jumps to incorrect conclusion (and won't allow an 'I don't know why I did that'). The sense of 'I' is part of your story-telling mechanism, you're quite clearly a 'we' not an 'I', so why suffer with something that doesn't work correctly?

We call our system 'cooperative' because in the past we all cooperated automatically without awareness we were a group (although awareness gradually grew until we couldn't ignore it), the 'I' is a mechanism of the cooperation, at the time it was very useful, but once we were aware of the actual truth that we were many, especially when there were several of us who weren't allowed any self-expression because they couldn't fit the 'story of the I', it had to be the first thing to go. There are still several of us who cooperate around a single self-identity at front but it's in a much more aware way, we all know that we are our selves as well as identifying with the group. Again, it's something we cultivated because what we had before caused more angst in a selves-aware system, when ideally these mechanisms should exist to make things run more smoothly.

I see you seem to be altering the story of your 'I' rather than changing it into something that allows a 'we', that's valid too, just remember that all the stories the concious makes, even the more accurate ones, are still just stories, still just whichever metaphor works best for you.

Oh and I've known some systems where the 'I' turns out to be some co-concious fronter who refuses to leave front, some where it's a filter front person who sits in front of everyone and some where the memory sharing isn't so constant, but even so, the procedures for passing a memory to the front person don't tag them with who they're from which in practise again looks like they're all 'and then I did this'.

Oh and the vast majority of systems have or have had at some point some sense of 'I' as part of the mechanism of their operating system. It doesn't mean you can't be median, but claiming it means you *must* be median would contradict the selves-identities of an awful lot of multiples.

-David.

I loved this...

[gia1977.livejournal.com]

"Oh and I've known some systems where the 'I' turns out to be some co-concious fronter who refuses to leave front, some where it's a filter front person who sits in front of everyone and some where the memory sharing isn't so constant, but even so, the procedures for passing a memory to the front person don't tag them with who they're from which in practise again looks like they're all 'and then I did this'."

I loved how you said that!! That fits me lately. I spend my time trying to figure my system out, but I'm not getting the picture. It all leaves me to the point of saying Okay, we are all active and there is not any real distinct way of telling who is out other than small things, but that is okay. My problem has been trying to figure who is the real one here. Is it the little who never comes out, but I can hear her or is it me or am I a part of the system or am I the, as some call it, the true host? It's been confusing lately.

Re: I loved this...

[36.livejournal.com]

"My problem has been trying to figure who is the real one here"

Real one? I don't understand, are you suggesting people in multiple systems aren't real??

Re: I loved this...

[gia1977.livejournal.com]

Hi, I am sorry I didn't clarify. No, I was not suggesting people in multiple systems are not real. I know they are real. When I had said, who is the real one - I meant within my system.

I spent a lot of time lately being confused as I had read a lot of a reports of all this happening because of abuse and the one who was abused is the birth one and that the people and the host was created within that birth body. For me, I was confused because I was very worried about am I the host or am I the birth body or what? I'm still figuring out my system. I just know I read your post and it described how I felt lately.

I did read an earlier/later post within the community and it did change how I viewed myself now. I know now, that it really is not important to find out if I am the host or if I am the birth body. What is the important thing (for me anyway) is that we are all here, within my system because of whatever happened and we all work together as a team and if it weren't for all of us, I wouldn't be here today and I/we wouldn't be who we/I am today.

I do hope this clarified things and I do hope there are no hard feelings. If I'm still not making any sense, then please let me know and I'll give you my personal email and we can discuss it.

[iamshadow.livejournal.com]

I don't know what I am...I generally put it down as median, for the simple reason that sometimes I'm very aware of others, and other times, there's nothing - it's all quiet, and I spend days at a time with not a murmur, no matter how I try to 'hear' or 'talk' to the others I know about.

I don't have memory lapses, but I don't know how co-concious I am either...it seems I only hear the others when they're close, or when they're talking to me.

A month or so ago, it was quite active - five was close, if not co-fronting almost every day. Go past the toy section and wham! she'd be there. She was gardening and starting to post on forums and the journal, either directly as her or by giving input to my posts.

And then, pretty much from one day to the next, I haven't heard a murmur. Not for weeks now, from anyone. If it hadn't been so real for such a long period of time, I'd swear I was crazy, but right now, I just feel like uno. If they're they're they ain't saying anything, or they're hiding. Just me, up the front, yet again. Waiting.

Yep

[gia1977.livejournal.com]

**Nodding in agreement!** Yep Yep Yep

[iamshadow.livejournal.com]

And of course, the day after I post this, Anachronis emerges....
Ruth, appreciating the complexities of existence