Multiplicity Q&A
Channel: River
Date: 2021-08-21

A friend working on a class presentation sent me a list of questions about living with multiplicity (often called dissociative identity disorder or DID) and I put this together to address as many of them as I could in a few minutes.

It's just a brief glimpse into our experiences, not a comprehensive overview (and fwiw I am not a psychologist), but maybe it'll answer some questions for you too. Feel free to ask more! 🌻
I'd also love to hear from any other plural folx about how your experiences compare 👩‍🔬✨

It's worth noting that both our understanding of our experiences and our level of interconnection and integration vary over time, so if there's interest I might post more videos with updates and new observations 🍃


Some clarifications (i.e. optional wall of text, if you're into that kinda thing 😘):

   -Keira specifically wears reading glasses, while my comment about seeing better was referring to handedness and spatial/tactile perception. I didn't mean to imply physical changes in our eyesight.
Also it's been pointed out to me that she must have some sense of smell to be able to taste things and cook the way she does, and that's a good point 🤔💯 I think it's more that she doesn't tend to have conscious awareness of that sensory channel 🤷

   -Our reservations around dating come and go, but tbh they're at least as rooted in our general emotional intensity and various traumas as they are in the work of navigating our multiplicity. In any case I'm definitely not trying to suggest systems can't or shouldn't date, just that we personally have often struggled in that area 🙃

   -We're interconnected enough that we usually identify as one person with three personalities; put another way, we identify both as one person and as more than one person 🐙 Feel free to see us either way (or both! ideally) so long as you respect the needs and preferences we express.

   -If you know me but you don't feel like you've met the others, it's probably because they were laying low for a while (for reasons). They're still around, though 👻🦇👻