This post is an update, and a provision of context for future articles. No content notices apply that I can think of. If any need to be added, please let me know in the comments.
On May 19, 2022, I resumed talk therapy in addition to the deep feeling work I had been doing. I have spesificly designated the talk therapy to the others of this community, who made it clear that with some acceptions they were unwilling to participate in such an intense and painful process. My reason for this is twofold. For one, in recent weeks I have realized that we’re still dealing with my control issues when it comes to others being themselves, writing, talking and acting in this world, and so on, and that those issues are mainly rooted in fear, which seems to be on my end. For two, I am still trying to rebuild, and correct, the course we took in the summer of 2016, and to break my own association of talk therapy with unfeeling, passionless intellectualization. So far, the second is happening. The first will take its time, but that’s fine by me.
My struggle is mainly focused on allowing other community members to talk; what they feel, I also feel, and there are times they bring things up that even I, with several months of feeling sessions behind me and a lifelong history of demanding room to express strong emotions in ways other than words, have a hard time staying with. I don’t like unknowns, and they bring with them a lot of those, through no fault of theirs. In many ways, I’m still getting used to being plural, because the distractions, rough patches, and other urgencies are out of the way for a change. I don’t feel the obligations, pressures, and demands I used to in regards to any of it, which leaves me free to realize how afraid I am of the implications of having an entire crowd of people sharing my head, my body and my life. Sure, I knew intellectually that being plural brought with it a lot of what usually happens when a group of beings are gathered into a place, but experiencing it, and finally having the frame of reference to do so, is something all the thinking in the world couldn’t have prepared me for. It’s something that only time will make easier, and time is what I will give it.
For right now, letting them speak, let alone do things in this world, is difficult. I plan to practice facing that fear anyway, because I am of the firm opinion that the only way out is through. I have reestablished talk therapy, alongside the deep feeling process, partially to remind me that I have made this dissision and keep me from wanting to run from it. I expect difficulties, but I also know that I can handle those better because I have more sources of information than I once did, and more support systems in place as well. I am ready and willing to allow this fear to run its course. Now, all I need to do is put myself into everyday situations where it can and will come up so that it can do so.
I’ve established an email group called PluralDiscovery. It is hosted on groups.io, and will be my main source of social focus on plurality outside of a therapeutic context when it becomes more active. This, as well as any other space I can find, will be important in our growing independent from the need for someone else to hold space in which we can communicate with one another. My hope is that, some day, I won’t panic every time I talk to them and I believe that establishing a group for plurals, by plurals is the first step toward that goal. The physical objects will come later, but for the moment my focus is getting the space I’ve created more active, with more members. At the moment, we only have two or three.
I’m sure the rest of the elements of 2016’s magical summer will return, in their time. This is a simple progress update; it wasn’t intended to be a full article and I honestly have struggled to make it this long, rewriting it several times before I came up with something I was happy with, not because I wanted it to be perfect but because I want it to make sense later on, when the details of the recent past have faded and slid out of the reach of anybody inside who I know. Even today there was progress; I managed to be pushed gently out of the way of someone whose favorite color was blue, and not to panic so much that I was returned to front when they said such to our talk therapist. I only hope I am able to allow those little things to continue, because those are the ones I struggle with the most. Time will tell.
Thank you for reading.