FAQ - "May I ask who's out?" - Long Version

 Always a good question, cause we don't always know either! We might not always be able to tell you. Sometimes for privacy, or some other form of reticence. Often because 'identity disturbance' means we just don't know. There's often a group together managing awareness, thoughts, memory, actions, emotions, communication.

"That sounds scary/confusing/difficult." Sure can be! We prefer not to dwell on that because it does us no favors. This comment isn't one of our favorites, we can tell you're the one who's spooked at the thought of stepping into our shoes. We're at peace with it, it's just how we function. Sometimes it sounds scary to be entirely solo in your own brain with absolutely no back-up and no one to check you! We struggle to imagine how hard it is to never be able to ask inside for help. How scary it is to be completely alone when you're not around any other persons. How confusing it is when you have conflicting feelings and can't talk it out amongst yourselves. You might be used to doing all of your self-awareness, external awareness, memories, emotions, communication without any thought at all. That's how it works for us too only each part is managed in partial compartmentalization.

The identities all mesh together to create a big ol "?" of a person. Kind of like your collective habits, memories, values, and actions create a big ol whoever you are of a person.

There might be one of us who remembers mostly positive memories and one of us who remembers mostly negative memories. Which then is accessible to whoever is in charge of communication. If positive-memory individual is 'on break', then "?" will have more access to negative-memory things.

With depression, someone is consumed for a long period of time with less-than-happy memories and feelings, it takes more energy to recall positives in memory, relationships, and emotions.

So while for someone else it's chemically driven, for someone like us it can also be driven by our 'constellation' of selves creating "?". It makes symptoms of depression, and other associated mood disorders, intermittent and variable. This means for us the symptoms of depression and anxiety do not respond well to medication. It's driven by different factors than the contested theory of chemical imbalance. (Another topic for another day). It also means that if there's a change in the constellation, so too will symptoms change.

We can rely on collective habits, memories, and environmental cues to help us regain a connection to "?" as a person with some amalgamation of identity. Developing more reliable communication between members of the constellation also helps us reconnect with daily life and long-term goals by making it easier to consciously and voluntarily share additional information that's requested.

In example, you know how you just know who you are because of these collections of memories, behaviors, emotions, and values? Most of that runs without your conscious awareness at all and you don't have to always think about who 'YOU' are just to function? Sure everyone goes through a period in life where their identity and place in the world are completely rocked and uncertain. We relate to all of that, but we also get the experience of knowing we're going through the motions but not really why. Taking actions and having behaviors without a connection to those memories or emotions. It's like the depression symptoms, intermittent. Having the ability to effectively communicate with each other allows us to reconnect with those things, and many times we have to spend the energy to consciously do so.

There are also times where the connection isn't conscious, but passive. Or it is subconscious. We would venture to say that it's how we unconsciously operate on a daily basis. Like anyone else, only we can go inside our mind and simply ask "Who's doing that, why are you doing that" rather than being lost in the mire and depersonalizing experience of idiosyncratic behavior. Cause who hasn't done something in their life and been like: "Why the hell did I do that?"

In some ways even though we might not know who we are as an individual at the given moment, and might not know all who are in our shared constellation, we have that security of being able to ask ourselves "what the hell" and actually get an answer. We can still connect to values, life-goals, reading comprehension, and important personal information like name, address, emergency contact. That's all we really need to function daily.

"Well I ask myself 'What the hell' and my inner critic tells me because I'm stupid, lazy, etc." Yeah we get that, and we've treated each-other that way too. Rather than making this any longer we would direct you to Internal Family Systems therapy by Richard Schwartz on that matter. Or Eleanor Longden's TED Talk. You and your inner critic don't have to be enemies. While you and your inner critic might be different from us and ourselves with the amnesia and dissociative compartmentalization of identity and memory, it's all human brains.

By that we mean, brains function within different realms that are being discovered, understood, researched, and learned about every day. We know a lot of things so far, and many experiences are more universal than the general populace might give credit to. If the Theory of Structural Dissociation is an accurate theory it posits: All humans are born with differentiated separate identity states, which over the course of a healthy development merge into a singular identity. That with the introduction of traumatic events at a developmental point of a child's life, those identity states can fail to merge and may develop amnesiac and dissociative barriers between each. Leaving compartmentalized selves that develop independently of one another, collecting different memory variations of shared life events and developing different patterns of behavior and emotional experience as a result.

That's a personalized paraphrasing of the Theory but our thought with it is that everyone has parts of themselves. There's a part that unconsciously scratches your butt, there's a part that feels ecstatic when you see a puppy, there's a part that loves playing around, and a part that knows the boundary of when to stop. It's just a matter of if barriers had to come into place of all of that. You still function as a whole human being no matter how you identify with the you that picks their nose.

So to "That sounds scary/confusing/difficult.", we said it sure can be. CAN be. As in: It isn't always, especially the more we support ourselves as an individual. We're definitely disabled but we wonder how much of that is because of our selves being all selvey, and how much of that is from the symptoms of ADHD and complex life-long trauma.

We don't want people to feel like being in our shoes is so alien and frightening that their mind closes off from the experience, or that we're viewed and interacted with through lenses of pity or savior complex. Not that what's going on in your private thoughts and all is any of our business, just that it creates interactions that are imbalanced and lose that authenticity that we as "?" and general collective value so much at this point in life.