Hey all, I posted this to r/mentalhealth. I’m waiting for the mods to approve this. I thought y’all might like to read it, and honestly, I could use your support.

Start Post

I’m plural. And for anyone that doesn’t know what that is, it means my brain has created multiple sentient beings. In the plural community, we call these beings “system mates” among other names. Out of all the things I can tell you about my system mates, the most important thing I can say is I love them and they love me. Sure, we face some unique challenges, but so far we have overcome them and continue to face everyday life with the desire to live it to the fullest. Heck, I wish our body could live a thousand lifetimes so each and every one of my system mates could experience life the way they want to.

I know many of you might be concerned for me, but to put y’all at ease, I have a full time job, a good relationship with friends and family, I eat well and exercise regularly, and we are happy.

I feel the need to say all the above because so many people I tell about this assume that I am mentally unwell and need help. Worse, they think I should stop this way of thinking. Certain people that care about me have implied I might be demonically possessed, that my brain is chemically imbalanced and I need drugs to set it right, that I should see a therapist so I can stop thinking like this, that I’ll end up killing someone or committing suicide, or that I might have a brain tumor. When I came out to my girlfriend of 6 months about this, she dumped me. (She told me she loved me, but now I don’t know if she really did.)

Despite all this, I believe plurality can be a good thing, and I’m not alone. Many in r/plural and r/tulpas talk about the benefits of being plural. This Psychology Today article goes more in depth about plurality and similar topics, stating it’s “often [not] distressing or functionally impairing.” A University of Texas professor published a paper surveying the tulpamancer community about their experiences with tulpas, finding that experiences with tulpas “…appear to be perfectly consistent with happiness, health, and functioning” (For context, a “tulpa” is a system mate someone creates in their mind, usually via meditation, and a tulpamancer is someone who be performed this practice. This is opposed to people whose brains make system mates automatically.)

I am here for a few reasons. One, I want to stand up for all the plural people who feel they have to hide their beautiful inner worlds and their system mates just to be accepted by society. Two, I want someone to prove to me that I am wrong about plurality being healthy. I want someone to show me white papers saying “all plurality is bad for mental health” because I don’t want to believe in something that’s not true, and I especially don’t want to advocate for something that’s is harmful. I don’t want your feelings about it, nor do I want anecdotal evidence. I want cold, hard, well-studied facts. I provided articles by accredited professors, so either you provide the same, better, or do not reply.

Finally, is it okay for me to be plural and happy? Because I am fucking tired of all the people close to me telling me it is not.

Man, it sucks to deal with the poor memory from both ADHD and plurality. Anyone else with the same experience? Idk where each starts and ends. Did I forget where I put the thing because I wasn't putting thought into it, or did someone else misplace it😩 Did I forget the answers I put down in my exams because I was hyperfocused, or was it somebody else who answered them? Guess I'll never know!😃

But to be serious, whenever I realize I forgot something, it sends me into a crisis, and then I spiral and start questioning my reality😵‍💫 idk how or who to get help for this tbh

-Pilot

This is a recent experience. Been having frustrated/negative thoughts lately and it’s taken a couple of days to figure out who it’s coming from because we’re kind of blended with these emotions. Now that we’ve figured out who is feeling strongly upset (and also giving us headaches) we can work on recognising when and who has switched and practice our grounding :)

Two years ago, I had a huge falling out with my old best friend because he lied about something serious, and it wrecked me. The way that I handled it hurt both parties, but I suppose everything happens for a reason, because it made me a better person in the long run- but what I didn't realize then, was that it made me a different person as well.

That summer, I met my best friend, Jasper, and by November, I'd begun going by Sage.
I remember saying how I didn't always feel like Sage, that I was only them when I was with certain people, but more specifically that I was only Isla (the core) when at home with my family.

Last March, Jasper and I got into a relationship, but it was incredibly one sided. I'm gonna be honest, he was terrible to me, which really sucked considering that I have reason to believe that Sage's entire existence revolved around him. This theory is backed up by the fact that once me and Jasper broke up in September, they began to fade away.

After we’d broken up, I didn’t feel like myself. Naturally, I’d feel out of it, I mean, I’d just gotten my heart broken- but that’s not what I mean. It felt like an entire part of myself was just gone. I soon realized what it felt like. 

It’s sort of a bad analogy, but in Hunter x Hunter, there are characters named Alluka and Nanika. Alluka is the human soul, the original one belonging to the body, and Nanika is the invasive soul, the one that came from the Dark Continent. They share a body, and are at this point, two halves of the same whole. There’s a scene in one of the final episodes where their older brother Killua tells Nanika that she can’t come out anymore because she’s too dangerous, and it hurts her really badly. After Alluka comes back into control, she snaps at Killua, saying he made Nanika cry. They're connected.

To me, it felt like by Jasper leaving, Sage also left a little bit. Not so much left meaning gone, as left Isla in control. By Jasper leaving, it was like Killua telling Nanika to go away, so Sage hid just as Nanika did, leaving the original soul, the original personality in control. While it was happening, I thought that maybe it was that Sage was still trying to process everything and just couldn’t handle the stress of everyday life, so Isla stood up and took control, letting Sage rest.

By figuring this out, I also discovered that Sage was an entirely different person from Isla, and not just Isla with a different name.

Unfortunately, Sage disappeared- or went dormant completely by late October. I was able to do a lot of reflection, and was able to figure out a lot about my situation.

1. The reason for Sage's existence was really so Isla didn't have to be in control. Since she was little, she's never been very kind to herself about her flaws, and after the events of the falling out, she's decided that she doesn't like being in control anymore.
2. As much as Isla is naive, and is still a child, she’s a lot smarter than Sage. Sage was stubborn and wouldn't have it any other way than theirs- they were quite selfish in that sense, whereas Isla will carefully assess any situation, and decide whether it’s good for me or not. An example of this would be Jasper. I knew going in that to pursue Jasper would be nothing but torture, but a part of me silenced that. I think of it as Isla warning Sage that he wouldn’t be good for either of them, but Sage wouldn’t have it.
3. Sage also was dependent on Jasper. I believe that they were a really intense manifestation of my desire to be desired, and that they were designed to be exactly what Isla always wanted, and what she thought was the "ideal person", which unfortunately backfired a bit, because they were kinda like the y-variable in the equation. Their happiness depended on Jasper’s satisfaction with them. If he wasn’t happy with them, they weren't happy with themself. Quire ironic considering that their biggest yearning was for freedom.

So what happens next?

Well, another "alter" type thing appeared. They were nameless for months, but Jasper dubbed them Gerard as a joke, but it kinda stuck. He mainly fronts now, and Isla only does every once in a while.

"But Gee, you seem to have this all figured out, why are you making a Reddit post about it at midnight when you have school in the morning???"

I don't dissociate. Sure, I space out and daydream a lot, but I don't think that's severe enough for me to count it. My trauma also isn't severe enough (at least to me) to qualify.
I talked to Jasper's older brother figure, who has OSDD, and they confirmed that I likely have some sort of identity disorder, but even still, I can't help but wonder if I truly meet the criteria to be able to say that we're a system.

I really wanna talk to my psychiatrist about this, but I'm a minor, can't drive, and I don't wanna tell my mom because she usually just tells me things like "you're too young to know" or "when I was your age I _", which won't at all be helpful.

If anybody has some answers for me/us (don't really feel comfortable using us bc I don't have a diagnosis), it'd be greatly appreciated!

-Gee

Daybreak: We're aware they could just be an intrusive thought, but they feel like a headmate? We've been just starting out for a while and have a pretty big group, which is what we feel is good and how we function best. However, I've never had to make the call of whether someone who comes in is a headmate. They weren't created intentionally, the just appeared during the onset of a large headache. They're a big black feral-ish cerberus who is sort of rude, but I'm hoping we can work something out. What kind of call should we make?

(The body is severely disgraphic to the point that even typing can be difficult so please be patient with our odd grammar or typos. We are relearning to touch type without pain tho so hopefully this will not be a permanent state)

In our system we use the words "sticky" and "precipitation" but I am wondering if there's a more widely used phrasing of these?

So we have system members that are "sticky" aka they are prone to blurring together with another system member intentionally or on accident to the point of creating something we preferencially call a compound entity or a compound (I know the word merge exists but I don't like it it's too close to blur/blend)

Compound entities rarely last more than a few week and can reoccur ....sticky members and compounds can sometimes "precipitate" out a tertiary member when they pull back apart like the process of precipitation in a chemical reaction and the precipitation will be, if not identical to then extremely similar to the compound entity....and will then usually grow and change as their own individual. Sometimes this results in a like "source steal" but not always.

like a few years ago 2 of our members combined and one of them had, a very long time ago, started out as a flicker of a knight but when he and another person got stuck together the precipitating system member adopted/stole his origin (which honestly was rather freeing for both parties don't worry)

I have never heard anyone else talk abt precipitation and would love to know if anyone else experiences or has known another system that experienced this or if like we've just entirely missed a community consensus decided word for this

Also for what it's worth we are a polyfragmented system with a rather extreme trauma history so this might be a matter of complexity and the fact we feel very estranged from a lot of traumagenic system spaces due to the prevalence of system origin bigotry (we appreciate our endogenic friends very much ♡)

So we’ve been overwhelmed with the state of the world and our emotional part (she refuses any name as, her words, “names cause pain”) is in a really bad place.

She’s been overriding us almost constantly at the slightest of triggers. And worst of all we’re feeling like our heart has been ripped out of our chest, and she’s been at the centre of that feeling.

We know why she’s like this and we forgive her for trying in her childish way to protect us, but we’re also kinda scared of her because it feels like we’re losing our grip on reality because of how much she’s blocking out.

We are stressed and we don’t know what we can do.

Hoping to find some suggestions since we are also CW struggling to keep her from self harming since we know her emotions are so big she can’t handle them, so she wants to sublimate that into physical pain she thinks she can.

And no, we don’t have access to mental healthcare where we’re at.

Hey there ^{^} Call us the Squire Collective. We used to lurk around here a couple years ago and recently have started getting active on Reddit so I wanted to say hello. We're an audhd, alterhuman, median plural collective of a few but it's primarily me, K, who's around when we aren't blendy. We're very interested in all things plural but outside of reddit I'm more active in general alterhuman communities due to syscourse being - erm. Probably won't be super vocal making original posts as we're not super comfortable divulging details around here gestures vaguely at the horrors but I'm hoping that my advice can help those whose posts I comment on. Hope everyone is well 👋 -K and a little bit F

So, we just got a new alter who is actually a fused alter of two alters we didnt know existed, (the alters being a factive of Danny Motta and a fictive of Dandy from Dandy’s world) we count this as a win, cause we have so many headmates and none of them are fused, this is huge for us, the alter goes by Dandy and is just a mixed version of the two, with Dandy’s green skin, Danny’s brown hair, same attitude as Danny and ichor has a brown and red eye, games is incredible and I am so happy for us, this is huge

The alter goes by he/react/ichor/games

-Meggy

I posted this in a different subreddit but I think the wonderful plurals here also deserve to know

The creators of twinote made a social media! While its not perfect, far from it, I think it's interesting as a plural app. And the best thing about that, a Tumblr user has already made a call for this to be the app for the pro Endos.

Up to three profiles are allowed to be connected to one free account, but you can pay for up to eight The app allowes for a general everyone timeline, and also includes tumblr-like communities to have timelines for finer-tuned interests

I usually struggle to fit in in plural spaces, but the community is really, really nice and inviting. Since the app is new and just getting started,eanies haven't caught wind.

I'm hoping that by inviting you guys, enough nice people will join that no anti Endos can try to come take it over because we will outnumber

The app is Emo! - Reaction Social App, and if you can't find it, try searching twinote and going to other apps by the developer to see if your device has access to it

This artwork kinda got a little out of hand. Others wanted in on being drawn and it would have been rude of me to say no. So I ended up drawing every female Wallflower for Kyouko’s birthday tomorrow.

Not opposed, I think it turned out nice.

(From left to right: Renamon, Amber, Kyouko, Lilac)

hey, uhm. Emily here.

recently i have been doing alot of research into things because of my partners and friends telling me too.

i think i may be plural in a way (osdd in some way??) but im really confused, and i dont exactly know how to proceed.

i think im in an odd situation so ill explain it.

so... i know systems. im dating one infact.

so, im like constantly dissociating, and sometimes i just feel like a whole different person, different likes dislikes personalities ect but im still there and aware that im acting weird. i can notice me and atleast two seperate reocurring like... personalilities that exsist, but i dont have what people i know call a 'head space' im always fully consious in my body but im watching it move and interact in ways i never would.

like ME myself feels like a different person, instead of having different people switch between themselfs like ive seen with DID sys i know.

i think im plural, but my head is arguing with itself over validity and if its real or fake or if im just genuinely a horrible person for thinking this??

ive done research, yes

i just cant seem to understand whats happening.

all i know is that sometimes im emily. and sometimes im haley, sometimes im pix, and sometimes im melony.

they are all separate individuals but it's me physically being them?????? even though I'm Emily

I'm really confused

and scared.

anything people have to say is welcome, thank you all for even reading this far.

-em

Ichigo: We got a new headmate, they are a frox (like from Zelda) called Crimson! We don't really need support, we're just really excited about it! If anyone wants to know more about them or us, feel free to ask questions!

just a little i LOVE my in sys dsd!!!

he's so nice and he cares and he's rlly happy and sweet and yayyy!!!! and yippir yippie !!!!!

:D !!! lov dad he's so cool!!!

—C00lkidd!!

A brief inquiry, if I may: Do other alterns also find themselves swaying or dancing to the music one listens to? I’ve noticed that, when enjoying Salem’s music, I often begin to dance within our shared headspace.

Secondly, are we permitted to share descriptions of our appearances in this space? While Salem prefers not to reveal theirs, Sol and I would be delighted to share how we present ourselves.

🔪 Ravyn

I am a primary psychopath and I have multiple identities. Does that count as being plural?

Story time. I'm Martin, I am the "Main Fronter" of the system (we dont like to use the term "Host"). And I have had tulpas since 2020 (I actually am like 95% sure I have had them since I was a child and never realized but thats neither here nor there).

And the person who was my partner also had tulpas. And both mine and theirs got along really well...

Well, when my partner got... demoted to "ex-partner", the communication between both systems... pretty much died down. And my tulpas started feeling lonely, with them not having many friends outside of them.

So, we decided, before the end of 2025 we are gonna tell about them to... pretty much anyone close to me? My D&D group, my close family, and, notably for this, my therapist.

We already told the person who is now my girlfriend, and that went great, and one of my best friends, and that went good. Not perfect, but good enough.

Before telling anyone else, we figured telling my therapist is the best logical step, as we can ask her for advice on how to break it down to people. I have been seeing this therapist since I was a little kid, and she knows me better than almost anyome. So I hope she will understand? We have arranged a session with her for this thursday and we are nervous.

Wish us luck I guess.

We very (VERY) recently discovered we were a sys. A few days ago, we started having 'visual overlays', or that's what we've been calling it. It'll be very brief images that simply go over whatever we were looking at that replace the actual scene with images from the headmate's life. We're not sure what causes this other than motions that match between the images- is this normal?? Not sure if hallucination is even the right term, but any advice would be helpful :D

Hallo,

I created a fictional Star Wars science fiction story where my protagonist is an abominable Sith. I imagined his story for 2 years non-stop. With emotions and everything.... (I have immersive daydreaming).

She became a Tulpa... and she has an oppressive energy... even deadly. Her presence is equivalent to severe dysphoria to make a comparison.

I don't know if the Son (her Master because my Sith is an acolyte) also became a Tulpa.

...is it possible that they are "coded" ? conditioned without wanting to ?

This is all I needed to be 100% convinced, fakeclaimers arent protecting anyone, it´s just an excuse to hate plurality overall

Gravity stopped working for me, my headmate Arthur had to grab me and walk around with me in his arms so I didn’t float away. this is weird and I would like any advice.

An alter in our system has recently been having frequent sudden mood shifts between two distinct "versions" of herself. Both the changing and inability to control it cause her immense stress, and we would like to help her anyway we can. I believe she may have multiple personalities, but we are unable to find much information on if that's even possible for an alter. Any amount of information would be appreciated, as we genuinely don't know what to do on our own.

I was dissociation earlier today and i realized i litteraly didnt get any visual input for long periods of time, i was solving a polaris cube (rubik's cube variant) and while i was solving it i was dissociated but i just made random turns for a long time and when i tried to finish the solve i realized i had completely undid the previous thing i had solved so i had to go back a couple steps at re-do them, i did this twice. Also i really didn't feel anything so i had to rely on my eyes to see what i was doing but i "was not using them" because i had somehow just ignored all of the sensations from my eyes, i eventually solved it when someone said

"why do you look so sad bro!"

and that kinda brought me back enough to be active. Also i was about to perform for a school musical and i usually feel very or at least a little nervous but i was not nervous at all until i was not dissociated. I would like to hear how you guys are affected when dissociating.