We've thought about how to define reality for ourselves once or twice, and this made us want to revisit that definition. We'd defined reality as something one experiences or perceives, and we decided that everyone has their own personal reality. Just because one reality contradicts another doesn't mean that those realities aren't equally real for those experiencing them.
"What is reality?" is an interesting question to think over, really. Another good one that was posed to us by a teacher is "what is trust?" which has wound up being equally worth defining along with "what is forgiveness?" posed by the same teacher. There are a surprisingly large number of ambiguous concepts like this that people insist on the importance of despite often lacking a definition of it for themselves.
"Because fears of faking are often a substitute for something else." This really made me stop and think for a moment. Do you ever read something and then have to stop because something about it just grabs you and makes you read it again, mull it over? That sentence did that.
You're completely right in our case when I think about it. When we're hit by denial and doubt, it's often brought on by fear of judgement or pain; seeing someone hurt someone else for being plural or tell them they can't exist often leads directly to a doubt spiral in ourselves and yet somehow I never made that connection. Thinking about how people would see us if we told them or about a situation where we might be told we don't exist sets doubt off as well. We're not afraid of faking, we're afraid of being hurt for our experiences or hurting someone else, and that manifests as projecting that onto our own existence. If people would hurt us for something, we tend to think we're somehow in the wrong regardless of whether we can control the experience in question. Still working on changing that because it's caused us a lot of problems in life to believe that other people are always right.
Back when we were first discovering ourselves, the fears were mostly the same, though there were a few added on that we've since moved past (progress!). There was the fear that our experiences weren't real and that we'd lost it, that we'd somehow left the realm of reality and would wind up institutionalized for life- we're not so afraid of that now after mulling over the question of what reality and sanity are. We were also afraid of change- still struggle with that but we've made progress. Having our concept of self change was terrifying, so denial came into play to avoid that. Luckily that didn't last too long, but 1-2 years of hardcore denial is a long time to be afraid all the same.
There's a friend of ours who said something to us back when DS was questioning his gender (well before he found out we existed). He told us to "live your truth" and that's stuck with us. If your truth is that you're sharing a head, live that. Do whatever helps you and makes the most sense for your lived experiences.
"We’re not afraid of faking; we’re afraid of losing our grip on reality and plummeting into psychological free-fall. We’re afraid that people might hurt us. We’re afraid that we did bad things, or that people did bad things to us, and accepting that we’re multiple means having to accept that too. And yes, sometimes we are indeed afraid that we are somehow harming abuse victims, just by existing."
That sums it up nicely.
It makes us sad that people harass each other at all, especially for things they don't control. It doesn't help people and doesn't really make progress, and there are better ways of interacting with people that you disagree with or want to help somehow. Even then, I think people would do well to learn how to "agree to disagree" and just let people exist as they are instead of trying to force them to change their minds. If it's not directly hurting someone, there's not much sense in going after someone for it (that said, if it IS directly causing harm then that's a problem).
Somehow this all reminds me of an article we saw on Twitter that attempted to conceptualize what a "self" is. The author went the route of the self as a narrative (rather than a discrete or concrete thing) that was surprisingly open to the existence of systems: "The chief fictional character at the center of that autobiography is one's self... One can discover multiple selves in a person just as unproblematically as one could find Early Young Rabbit and Late Young Rabbit in the imagined Updike novels: all that has to be the case is that the story doesn't cohere around one self, one imaginary point, but coheres (coheres much better, in any case) around two different imaginary points."
no subject
"What is reality?" is an interesting question to think over, really. Another good one that was posed to us by a teacher is "what is trust?" which has wound up being equally worth defining along with "what is forgiveness?" posed by the same teacher. There are a surprisingly large number of ambiguous concepts like this that people insist on the importance of despite often lacking a definition of it for themselves.
"Because fears of faking are often a substitute for something else."
This really made me stop and think for a moment. Do you ever read something and then have to stop because something about it just grabs you and makes you read it again, mull it over? That sentence did that.
You're completely right in our case when I think about it. When we're hit by denial and doubt, it's often brought on by fear of judgement or pain; seeing someone hurt someone else for being plural or tell them they can't exist often leads directly to a doubt spiral in ourselves and yet somehow I never made that connection. Thinking about how people would see us if we told them or about a situation where we might be told we don't exist sets doubt off as well. We're not afraid of faking, we're afraid of being hurt for our experiences or hurting someone else, and that manifests as projecting that onto our own existence. If people would hurt us for something, we tend to think we're somehow in the wrong regardless of whether we can control the experience in question. Still working on changing that because it's caused us a lot of problems in life to believe that other people are always right.
Back when we were first discovering ourselves, the fears were mostly the same, though there were a few added on that we've since moved past (progress!). There was the fear that our experiences weren't real and that we'd lost it, that we'd somehow left the realm of reality and would wind up institutionalized for life- we're not so afraid of that now after mulling over the question of what reality and sanity are. We were also afraid of change- still struggle with that but we've made progress. Having our concept of self change was terrifying, so denial came into play to avoid that. Luckily that didn't last too long, but 1-2 years of hardcore denial is a long time to be afraid all the same.
There's a friend of ours who said something to us back when DS was questioning his gender (well before he found out we existed). He told us to "live your truth" and that's stuck with us. If your truth is that you're sharing a head, live that. Do whatever helps you and makes the most sense for your lived experiences.
"We’re not afraid of faking; we’re afraid of losing our grip on reality and plummeting into psychological free-fall. We’re afraid that people might hurt us. We’re afraid that we did bad things, or that people did bad things to us, and accepting that we’re multiple means having to accept that too. And yes, sometimes we are indeed afraid that we are somehow harming abuse victims, just by existing."
That sums it up nicely.
It makes us sad that people harass each other at all, especially for things they don't control. It doesn't help people and doesn't really make progress, and there are better ways of interacting with people that you disagree with or want to help somehow. Even then, I think people would do well to learn how to "agree to disagree" and just let people exist as they are instead of trying to force them to change their minds. If it's not directly hurting someone, there's not much sense in going after someone for it (that said, if it IS directly causing harm then that's a problem).
Somehow this all reminds me of an article we saw on Twitter that attempted to conceptualize what a "self" is. The author went the route of the self as a narrative (rather than a discrete or concrete thing) that was surprisingly open to the existence of systems:
"The chief fictional character at the center of that autobiography is
one's self... One can discover multiple selves in a person just as
unproblematically as one could find Early Young Rabbit and Late
Young Rabbit in the imagined Updike novels: all that has to be the
case is that the story doesn't cohere around one self, one imaginary
point, but coheres (coheres much better, in any case) around two
different imaginary points."
- 15S