Same anon who asked about systems. I’m familiar with DID, but what’s a “multiple,” “natural multiple,” and a “mental collective”? And how is a “mental collective” different from a “system”?
A multiple is any person, either one with DID or not, who habitually shares their mind and body with other persons/personalities/entities.
A mental collective is new word. Previously all multiples, both DID and non-DID used the term system.
A mental collective is distinct from a system in that a system is composed of alters- persons created by the mind of the original single person as a response trauma.
A mental collective is composed of persons who are not alters. They’re referred to as headmates. Unlike alters, headmates are not created by trauma, and rather are created by, or enter into the mind in different ways.
A natural multiple is a multiple whose experience is non-disordered. That is, that having multiple people share their body is not a result of trauma, and does not cause undue social problems or mental stress.
Please let me know if there’s any more I can explain!
Can we not make this alter-headmate distinction? I’m fine with folks trying to make new words for endogenic systems (”collective”), but plenty of folks with DID or OSDD-1 use, like, and prefer the word “headmate”, and hate/are triggered by/disprefer “alter”. Don’t take it from them.
Also “A natural multiple is a multiple whose experience is non-disordered” nope. Natural means not caused by trauma – people can still experience plenty of disorderly difficulties and even seek treatment. Traumagenic folks can experience themselves as non-disordered, either due to having done a lot of recovery work, having been lucky, or just fighting against the medicalization of being a survivor. Traumagenic/natural and non-disordered/medicalized are different binaries, here.
– Thomas
Yeah, I reject the idea that ‘system’ can only be used by trauma systems. Since when? The Zyfron System (who created healthymultiplicity.com with us) use the term, and far as they know, they aren’t trauma-based. And I haven’t used the term ‘alter’ for myself in years; why would I want to boil down my existence to the trauma that created me? Major downer.
Thanks for clarifying things for me i never know wich Word to Use for the others in englisch
but doesnt System mean you have to have a clear structure or hierarchy meaning having defined haste? we have a Front Team but its members very dependung on their energy Level and their wabring to be outside or Not
so we dont fit in this structured hierarchical idea of a System many people have but how to call it otherwise in english?
i have never talked to others or read books in english so i dont know
Greetings JanisI don’t think so. I mean, our group has rules and a form of internal government, but it’s pretty loose, because we’re a small group. (Only eight people. That’s small enough to make unanimous consensus doable.) And we don’t really have a hierarchy! We have different jobs, but we can change them if it’s not working for us, and our front team (four of us) switches in and out as things require. I am around the most, and Mori claims I’m in charge, but I got the job by accident, and kept it because of my stress tolerance. Other people have run the system in the past, and I haven’t been fronting as much as I used to, because other people here are better at cooking, laundry, and shopping!
We use system, and we don’t have like Official Structures and we have no idea if we’re traumagenic or not. (And we all hate the word ‘alters’ and avoid it whenever possible.) Only six of us, even smaller than LB. (Also, Collective sounds like a counterculture commune in the 60s-70s, which does not make me inclined to want to use it.)
“System” can mean lots of things. In our group, our “system” is the set of relationships and communication channels we establish with each other. Some of us have certain responsibilities and roles that we play, but we don’t consider those Systers as having any more say in sorority life than anyone else. We used to be that way but it wasn’t working for us. Once we all started sharing equal responsibility, those that tried to micro-manage our system felt much better.
-Serenity & Hope
(reblogging this for interesting and diverse opinions on the term ‘system’ for multiples)
