plegg culture is switching during class, getting hit with a wave of dysphoria when the teacher refers to you by the host's gendered terms, then thinking "am..am I trans?"

I am trans, but also like... my guy-

This is a really hard one, from more recent experience.

Gender is hard.

Matroska Doll/Egg Carton & Host-Is-AroAce & BrainBody is Autistic, but MOSTLY a Matroska Doll/Egg Carton thing: taking any pop song about traditionally romantic relationships literally when they talk about people "running through my head," or "being a part of me," or whatever and then going WAIT WHAT THAT ISN'T FUCKING LITERAL WHAT DO Y'ALL MEAN THEN —

Plegg culture is me watching Steven universe years ago and being so sad and sobbing at the thought of never being able to experience fusion or anything like it…

Back when we were egg, I [anon] to feel atracted to another of our sysmembers, but I always thought I was atracted to myself. That happened with quite the number of headmates

Now stuff is hella awkward lmao

Plegg culture is when I thought I was writing new personas for myself to wear as masks, but no, I was just getting blurry with it and co-fronting with various members of our system.

Plegg culture is talking to yourself about something but stopping because you feel embarrassed... Only to then get the strong sense that you should finish your thought because it would be wrong to "leave yourself hanging."

This is an oddly specific one that we are guilty of a lot

plegg culture is taking “reliving your memories and carrying them with you” far too literally and then wondering why no one else is talking abt the personified collection of memories that (you assumed) everyone must have

This one really helped reframe how we think about system members in all honesty.

A visual pun

plegg culture is playing the daily game of "what the heck are you talking about" when your family/friend/roommate mention a conversation you had the day before

Whoops. Been there. Except it can happen within the span of minutes at times for us c,,c

median plegg culture is assuming you kin a bunch of characters until you realise you ARE that character.. but also thats not me???

being constantly confused until you realise they're all facets

That's a very familiar one. We put on an outfit that turned out to be tied to one of our fictives and got reeeally confused by that before we realised we were a system.

Hey hi! Cool to see you helping continue the theme. We've been struggling a ton behind the screen and have had some hard system shifts that have had to be worked on before we can really devote time to the blog again. Wishing you luck with this endeavor~

Eggy (pinned post)

Greetings! This is a culture-is blog centered around experiences, jokes, and stories from before a person (or persons) knew they were plural/a system. It was inspired by @plural-egg-culture-is, and is meant to act as an accompanying/substitute blog to it, especially while it is on hiatus. If you'd like more info, please check that blog's pinned post before sending us a message, as it has plenty of information that will likely cover most questions.

Here are some basic guidelines to follow when submitting to this blog:

Follow the "culture-is" prompt; begin your submissions with some form of "plegg culture is", such as "system egg culture is", "median egg culture is", or "DID egg culture is". You can even shorten it to "PCI" if you so wish!

No discourse or fakeclaiming is allowed on this blog. However, light mentions will be allowed if relevant to a submission.

NSFT is allowed, but for everyone's comfort, please do not go into detail. Again, stick to light, relevant mentions only. (If NSFT is submitted, rest assured that it will be tagged appropriately.)

This blog is open to all plurals, systems, and other related parties. If you're an exclusionist when it comes to one or more of these groups, we recommend you do not interact.

A few more details under the cut, but that should be all you need. Thanks for stopping by!

Basic tag list:

plegg culture is: for any submissions or original posts about plegg experiences

not plegg culture is: basically everything else

asks: self-explanatory

submission: self-explanatory

mod post: for when we wish to give updates about the blog, or address a topic relevant to it

(insert any emoji here): unlikely to be used, but will serve as a mark of who in our system made a given post.

Other tags will be added to posts as we see necessary.

Here's an example submission:

Plegg culture is never understanding why other people's favorites don't change as often as yours do.

Back way before we even knew about plurality I had an argument with the Ammako on our names since we both wanted Ammy. I got Ammy and she got Ammako (which is just alternate to Ammy). Even factoring in the prior conversations we had, we didn't question it. When we did learn about plurality by chance it still took a lot of convincing to believe it.

A New Model of Dissociative Identity Disorder by Paul F. Dell, PhD

For the first article that I submit to this page, I wanted it to be Paul F. Dell’s work on DID. Mostly because to date, he is my favorite research psychologist doing work on DID. I found his work to be rather thorough and really accurate comparatively to the DSM’s criteria and the current vision of DID that people seem to have.

This specific article outlines P. Dell’s suggestions for the DSM 5 (which is now out - and his research was completely ignored). Of course, his research proves pretty much the opposite of what we’ve been saying DID is for at least the last 40 years.

“Awareness of the presence of other personalities has been widely reported in the empirical literature on DID. Such awareness is a common occurrence in DID. Moreover, many patients who have DID hear or see what some personalities say or do when they are ‘‘out.’’ Many clinicians have incorrectly assumed that a person who has DID can never be aware of the activities of another personality.

[…]

With the exception of amnesia, dissociative individuals have contemporaneous, conscious awareness of all other dissociative intrusions (eg, depersonalization, derealization, voices, intrusive thoughts, ‘‘made’’ actions). Thus, with the exception of amnesia, all dissociative events are partially conscious. A major shortcoming of the DSM-IV is encountered here. DSM-IV’s classic picture of DID embraces full dissociation (ie, amnesia), but omits partial dissociation. This omission is a problem because incidents of partial dissociation are vastly more common than incidents of switching-accompanied-by-amnesia.”

Basically, what he’s saying is that most people with DID have some awareness of the actions of their alters - and that this has been proven time and time again — but the people who put together the DSM are purposely ignoring this fact, which results in people who would properly be diagnosed DID often ending up with a diagnosis of DDNOS. P. Dell found that most people with DID are rather partially dissociated (essentially just ‘zoned out’/disconnected) when they switch, rather than fully amnesic.

This is especially important to note, as the entire ideal of DID that has been put out by the media and popular culture is one of complete amnesia and a total lack of knowledge of being DID, which is not even remotely the truth - in fact is so not the truth, that it’s been proven time and time again that most multiples have some awareness of their others. (This of course does not mean that there’s never amnesia, obviously, or that all people with DID are fully aware of their others… but that this vision of always being amnesic and never being aware us so incredibly wrong and unfounded by empirical evidence.)

Furthermore, P. Dell suggested a complete overhaul of the diagnostic criteria of DID.

The subjective/phenomenological model of Dissociative Identity Disorder

General dissociative symptoms (4 of 6 required) Memory problems Depersonalization Derealization Posttraumatic flashbacks Somatoform symptoms Trance

Evidence of the partially dissociated intrusions of another self-state,as indicated by either 1 or 2: 1. Clinician observation of a self-state that claims (or appears) to be someone other than the person being interviewed, as indicated by the person’s Co-conscious awareness of the activities of the self-state; and Remembering what the self-state said and did Experiencing the self-state as ‘‘other.’’ 2. At least 6 of the following 11 symptoms of intrusion by a partially dissociated self-state: Child voices Internal struggle, conversation, or argument Persecutory voices that comment harshly, make threats, or command self-destructive acts Speech insertion (unintentional or disowned utterances) Thought insertion or withdrawal ‘‘Made’’ or intrusive feelings and emotions ‘‘Made’’ or intrusive impulses ‘‘Made’’ or intrusive actions Temporary loss of well-rehearsed knowledge or skills Disconcerting experiences of self-alteration Self-puzzlement

Evidence of the fully dissociated intrusions of another self-state(ie, amnesia), as indicated by either 1 or 2: 1. Clinician observation of a self-state that claims (or seems) to be someone other than the person being interviewed, followed by the person’s subsequent amnesia for the clinician’s encounter with the self-state. 2. Recurrent amnesia, as indicated by the person’s report of multiple incidents of at least two of the following: Time loss ‘‘Coming to’’ Fugues Being told of disremembered actions Finding objects among one’s possessions Finding evidence of one’s recent actions

The sad thing about this criteria is that P. Dell found it to be more accurate than the previous criteria for diagnosing DID… but the DSM 5 acknowledged none of his suggested changes - even though it was as accurate as the MID for diagnosing DID (the MID (Multidemensional Inventory of Dissociation) is list of questions intended to figure out where people fall on the dissociative scale). ((Note: The MID questions are available online, but they require a special Excel spreadsheet to score - which can only be obtained by psychologists by ordering it from the psychologist who created it. Sad day.))

In conclusion:

The sociocognitive model of DID is necessarily wed to the DSM-IV’s model of classic DID. Why? Because the general culture’s model of DID is classic DID. Classic DID is clearly reflected in Sybil. Classic DID has also been reflected in countless portrayals of DID in contemporary films and television programs. In short, the DSM-IV’s essential phenomena of classic DID (ie, multiple personalities + switching + amnesia) are very familiar to the general culture. Although not intended as such, the present findings refute the sociocognitive model of DID because 15 of the 23 subjective dissociative symptoms that were measured (the criterion A symptoms except for trance and the criterion B symptoms except for self-alteration) are invisible (ie, completely experiential), unknown to the media, unknown to the general public, and largely unknown to the mental health field. Nevertheless, these 15 subjective dissociative symptoms occurred in 83% to 95% of persons who had DID. The pervasive presence of these symptoms cannot be explained (away) by the sociocognitive model’s ‘‘usual suspects’’ - therapist cueing, media influences, and sociocultural expectations regarding the clinical features of DID. There can be no therapist cueing, media influences, or sociocultural expectations about dissociative symptoms that are invisible, unknown to the media, unknown to the culture, and largely unknown to the mental health field.

Basically what this is saying is that what we’ve been taught about DID is wrong - that it’s been modeled after Sybyl’s story (which, as we know, was highly inaccurate and exaggerated for entertainment value) - and that many of the symptoms P. Dell found to be common amongst people with DID can not be explained by social/media influence, or even caused by the therapist - as most people are COMPLETELY UNAWARE OF IT.

So basically, every time someone says “you’re DID because you have the internet” or “because you saw Sybyl”, they’re completely wrong - as the symptoms of DID, many of which are not noted in the DSM or in popular media are unknown to the general public, including psychologists.

I just wanted to list the most important parts of the article (or rather, what I thought was important for this page). As much of it is information from studies that Dell has done, the language of the article is a little clinical and dry. I really didn’t want to make anyone read that if they didn’t want to. You are welcome to read the actual article (it is here: http://www.copingwithdissociation.com/Dell_2006_ANewModelofDID1.pdf#bib1), and if you want to know more about Paul Dell, here is his website: http://understandingdissociation.com/

Plegg culture is writing stories so hard that you feel like you've "become" your characters in some form, even doing it to help/cope with things in daily life, but then dismissing that as "oh all writers probably do that"... and only then finding out that no, not every writer does that.

-entire system turns to look at our first overt autoject-

Temporary Submission Closure

We’re closing submissions/inbox for a bit while we whittle down the backlog over time. Motivation and energy to dedicate towards this blog is fleeting for us and we’re gonna take it slow while we work through the inbox

plegg culture is describing your thoughts like audio channels in a gameboy where there's multiple streams of thought at the same time and they all have slightly different personalities (hope thats plegg culture at least bc if it isnt then theres somethin else going on)

Familiar admittedly. Leading up to the plegg crack we described our brain as being “hyperthreaded“ like a computer processor

Plural egg culture is spending half a decade thinking exclusively in the form of conversations, going as far as to refer to yourself as "we" and "us" in your head, all the while thinking that's just you being "weird and quirky" and doesn't mean anything. What's that? The inside joke you have with friends about being 3 foxes in a trench coat makes this claim suspicious? You're probably just overthinking it.

Ow this one feels like a direct attack /j

We did a lot of this too