System Communication

as a system without an innerworld/headspace, communication between alters can get pretty difficult (of course, it can be difficult regardless). something that really helps us with that (sometimes) is externalizing our communication so it doesn't all stay internal. when it is strictly internal, it is often fuzzy, or unclear. i might be able to pick out parts of what another alter is saying but maybe i don't get the full message. or i will just guess based on what i feel is there.

we have a discord server for just our system and use pluralkit so we have our own display names and profile pictures. this helps us a lot because we can see who says what and it isn't so jumbled up.

discord/pluralkit doesn't work for everyone, though. external communication doesn't work for everyone, either. but if you're a system who's struggling with alter communication and you haven't yet tried a form of external communication, it may be helpful.

some other ways to externalize communication are:

using a journal

writing on post-it-notes

typing out in a document or notes app

talking out loud (if it is safe to do so)

Hi I'm sorry if you don't take asks like this but I really need some advice. I think I'm a system, it's becoming more and more clear to me and I think we're a system of four girls. I (I guess as the "host") am trying to communicate but I can only really hear certain things at certain times which makes communication really hard. Do you have any suggestions to help with that?

(As a disclaimer, I am going to respond to this on the assumption that you are correct that you are a system as we don't really like to assume people are or are not past what they say for themselves and from reading this I think that assumption is fitting for this anon; sorting out if you are a system is a whole headache of a thing that we can't comment much on, but I do want to put out best wishes on that cause damn that shit be rough)

Oh it's fun days of early system-hood and what not.

I wanna be upfront, its been a while since we've had to actively work with communication and high dissociative barriers so any suggestions and advice I might give here might be a bit "dusty" in the sense I haven't really been in your position for a while and thus I have to think back some to how it used to be for us so I wanted to apologize if any of this comes off as out of touch with the stress of being new to it.

Largely in earlier periods of identifying, getting to know, and communicating with parts that have higher dissociative barriers, I typically used to approach it in a few ways. I often try all of them and some parts and some situations work better with one approach than the other and what not.

Try to find out patterns and me mindful of what is going on and what sort of things seem to be correlated and related to the times when you do hear those parts.

It can be very helpful to have an idea of what parts (or if you are struggling to identify parts vs mood swings vs etc; what states of emotional regulations that feels incongruent with your sense of self) seem to occur relating to certain things going on in life and/or stimuli and/or experiences.

Often - at least in our experience - parts are prone to being near the front, prone to being closer in communication, easier to internally communicate with when something in life / in the environment is activating "their part of the brain" (which is our way of saying something that is connected / meaningful to that part).

If you can identify some of those patterns in life / the environment with the parts that are up and around, it can help you mentally prime yourself to notice opportunities where you might have an easier time reaching a part.

Additionally, later on as I suggest having a less direct approach early on as some parts can find it uncomfortable and "too forward" in my experience so take it slowly and respectfully, setting up the environment to have things associated with them and setting some mental space aside to actively try to reach them. It's always this kind of silly thing - especially when it doesn't work cause it doesn't always work - because it feels like some summoning ritual, but I like to think of it a lot more like a moderated meditation that is more internally focused on trying to talk to your parts than it is trying to be "present in your body" which can be extremely triggering for people with C-PTSD / DID that haven't gone through a lot of trauma processing.

If internal communication is still hard and/or you have a trusted person that you can talk to and reliably trust with venting, personal issues, etc - ask if they could help.

Having an external person can really help in the early periods of trying to mediate and communicate messages to other parts in a more natural manner. It does require that the person be someone you know you can trust and someone that is cool with doing this and so I suggest you ask if they are willing to first cause... ya know, boundaries are important, especially with your trusted confidants.

But if you have someone who is safe, trusted, and willing to do so, it can be helpful to ask them "hey if I suddenly change my mind on this can you remind me (insert thing)" (<- good for when you don't know any part in specific but have noticed this is something that isn't coordinated), "if I start doing XYZ or claim I am XYZ can you let them know / pass on the message that (XYZ)", and for parts that aren't the host and/or have information that the "host can't know but might be helpful to someone wanting to support them" you can also tell that person "hey Host doesn't need to know the specifics but here is some context so please be kind about this" (<- helpful when you have a trusted person who is willing and wanting to help you as a whole heal as their knowledge of it can help slowly ease hard concepts to parts that were otherwise unaware)

Having an external person help facilitate can be helpful in priming yourself to be aware and cognicent of other parts and help get important messages through.

Use writing, maps, and journals.

And if neither of those work OR you just want to try another method along side them, a thing I found that was immensely helpful early on was to just have a journal, notepad, or something to write on. Setting a habit and precedent of writing notes and leaving them in the open, putting annoying commentary on notes that were taken at school (may that be hi or playful jabs or whatever your communication style is) - it sets a good will and good foundation for being open to conversation and a good intent to want to get to know the others that share the life

A thing that I found that was helpful later in life for really complex conversations was to kind of just do a brainstorming web with colored pens, assigning / claiming one color to a part then - with whoever is out - looking at it, filling out all the main lines of thought to the topic as they have and literally writing down every thought that may be even the slightest relevant in a kind of "brainstorm web" style that makes sense

Then you can set that aside in a place you know the body frequents a lot with other pen colors (maybe put an instruction on the top to "just add your commentary and thoughts" if the dissociative barriers are high) and hope that the next time someone else is out (or if you do the "summoning ritual" thing from the top you may be able to get someone out, but again, don't do that unless you have permission from the part) they will add to the web. And the time it takes to get a full image of what multiple parts think and feel on a topic will vary depending on the parts, topic, and your experience of doing this and what not, but overtime youll get a more collected and cohesive summary of what multiple parts are thinking and which parts think that and which parts disagree. Then when you have a lot of information, you can look at the whole brain storming web and kind of try to understand the overall picture before making a decision.

i am fairly certain we have an alter that is making us go to sleep at inopportune times, does anyone else have a part like this?

hi oz, ozzy, and josha!

im the host of a system thats currently going through some upheaval, the inner world was just completely redone and is even larger than it used to be, everyone is seperate from each other now (but can still go between each others homes, were just not on top of each other in a shared hallway)

ive been noticing that my alters are all somewhat distresses right now, theyre not doing anything dangerous but theyre all feeling incredibly...lost? i guess? they feel like their purposes aren't needed anymore, like we dont need an alter for sex work because we dont do that now and are in a monogamous relationship. or they just, wanna redo themselves almost?

is there any way for me to facilitate this? or help them i guess? we have a pretty bad relationship honestly, my adult alters strongly dislike/borderline hate me honestly, which is making it hard for me to help them, but they also dont seem to want help?

anyway, thank you so much for your time and i hope you had a good day, youre incredible people 💖

Hello.  Thank you for your encouragement.  If some members of your system are experiencing distress but don’t really want your direct help, maybe helping indirectly by providing an opportunity for them to have input and increased communication through writing to one another may increase their sense of purpose by focusing their energy on a common task of understanding and cooperation. This could also give them an opportunity to share regarding any distress they may be feeling, and if there are any issues related to this, of which you may not br aware. They would also have a space to state ideas to be considered in working toward compromises that might be achieved to maybe improve their sense of wellbeing. If you’re interested, Oz and Ozzie’s system have posted some journals and workbooks to help improve system communication and working cooperatively toward some common goals here. It may not happen that the members of your system who are currently experiencing distress are the first to participate in these writing activities; however, as they see others participate, they may be inclined to join.  As your system’s communication improves, your overall relationship with the others may change in a positive way as well.  I hope this helps some.  I wish you well.

~Josha

Poem 7

Welcome inside the mind.

We have marvels before us,

so many little odd rooms.

The Others might be there.

Here is the heart of the house,

our center of operations,

a kind of common room,

entirely inside the dark,

but we who live here can hear

each other. It’s not hard

once you get in to practice.

Process: Remix

Source: Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House. New York: New York, 2006. 41, 77, 78, 45, 46, 55, 78, 72, 79. Print.

Eli is the mom of the system not in the gender sense but in the sense that when they sigh and put their hands on their hips and just do chores and stuff while co fronting bc they know i won’t do it if they’re not literally taking partial control. 💫

talking to myself a minute blah

man it's so sad how much i keep reading over this thing i wrote wanting to post it but being so terrified of people judging and being mean about it and i keep twisting my brain around to find ways i can justify it just as a preemptive little "please don't hurt me i'll apologize in advance" but then worrying just as much about coming off as annoyingly insecure to where i'm just paralyzed and post nothing at all despite this longing to connect with others

it's sad that you feel that way because i guarantee i will fight anyone who tries to give you shit on it. they know nothing. they wanna be assholes? let them. you don't have to justify shit. if everyone else can talk about their things, so can you, and i dare anyone to disagree. they can fight me personally.

you are not a scared little mouse. you are a warrior, because you are me, and i won't let anyone hurt us again.

Microdosing polyamory by dating a system

hey guys do the allos know that they can have qprs too? like do they know that being alloromantic doesn't mean they can't choose to be in a qpr anyway? because qprs aren't "romance-lite" for aros, they're an entirely separate kind of relationship that anyone can have. you can do this with fictional characters too. you can put characters that aren't aroace or are even canonically dating in qprs with each other just because you think that would be a cool way to play with their dynamic. it's actually very cool and you totally should.

being immortal and having DID must be crazy. yeah our boy Carlos hasn't fronted in 300 years and just woke up to the sound of Uptown Funk and started screaming

Technically, if you’re plural, every project is a group project. Give your headmates credit

Hi

I hope you're doing ok

I have been trying to find different answers from disparate sources about system experiences.

Could you tell me a bit about how you communicate with your alters or how your alters communicate between each other.

Is it only outside communication such as notes or a journal, or do you also communicate in your head, through thoughts, emotions and judgements?

Can you actively talk to each other or is it just emotions being felt by you?

Can alter A say to alter B 'I like this shirt, we should wear it' or do you get feelings that would draw you to wear that specific shirt? Just an attempt at a bad example for what I'm trying to ask.

Any experiences you are happy to share will be a great help

hi there anon! and thanks, i hope you're doing ok too!

for us, our communication is a mix of some of the ways you listed.

sometimes it is direct internal communication through thoughts, other times its through emotions, and other times its a general sense of knowing something (e.g; knowing a certain alter wants to do x thing, or feels x way about a situation, etc.)

and there's also passive influence! here's a video that i think explains passive influence well: What is Passive Influence?

the form of communication tends to correspond with how near to the front an alter is (in our system, at least). if an alter is barely close to the front, it is most likely going to be passive influence, emotion, or "knowing" rather than directly saying something in thoughts.

we externalize our communication sometimes to better understand or make sense of it. the main way we do that is with our own little discord server that is just for our system. we use a bot called pluralkit which allows you to have a proxy for each alter with customization display names and profile images!

Shout out to systems who cant get diagnosed. Shout out to systems who split easily. Shout out to systems with high introject counts. Shout out to complex systems. Shout out to systems with mostly littles. Shout out to systems with small alter counts. Shout out to systems who dont want to get diagnosed cause they dont want it on their record. Shout out to systems with nonhuman alters. Shout out to systems

How to discern what our color programs each mean? We have read and heard various different things about what color means what an alter was programmed for but for each organization it’s going to be different so how do we discern what each color in our color programming means?

Alters are color coded based on their roles in the system, so a way to determine what the color coding means would be through alter communication.  Oz has written about alter communication here. It sometimes takes awhile to determine these things.  Take your time in figuring them out.

~Josha

we were talking to our clinician about our system, and he said “DID is usually self diagnosable” and i joked like you’re gonna get cancelled. the system community crumbles as a licensed therapist supports system self diagnosis.

"system joy" comic from an OSDD-1b system

i'm sorry if there is any noticeable art style changes throughout the comic. it was worked on across several days, and usually our comics are completed within one. our comic style isn't always 100% consistent depending on who is fronting or co-fronting :') but we tried to keep it similar enough so that it hopefully wouldn't be too disorienting.