Date First Written: March 2010; Date Last Updated: March 2021
The Creation of Our Multiplicity
Introduction
We are a multiple system. Meaning that we are a group of individuals sharing the same physical body. What exactly caused our multiplicity is complicated to say the least with some of our origins being fairly clear and certain to us, while other aspects are vaguer or not fully known in detail. Because of the “it’s complicated” status of our origins that we consider ourselves a “mixed-origin” multiple system as it were.
We know how a number of us individually got here and have some strong guesses on some other people. For some people it was because of one specific cause or another, other people it was because of more than one cause coming into play to cause their existence here, and some people aren't sure where and how they got here. For the people less certain of their personal origins, they have our own hypotheses with varying levels of fervency to it.
What makes it hard for us to know how everyone got here is that we do not remember basically anything from our childhood before the age of about 7, and all memories after that age have us as already being aware to some degree of some of each other, switching control of front between us, etc. So we only have so much to go on as far as figuring out how our multiple system came about. Honestly, we may never be fully aware how it all got started in detail no matter how much time we could spend combing through the earliest memories that we can dredge up.
We have never, as far as our collective memory goes back, have been alone in this head/body. As far back as we can remember, we have always been a we. A majority of us have been around since we can remember much of a thing. (And those after our memories begin are not a majority and seem to have arrived after certain events throughout our life.) Even if we were not aware of each other to the true extent we are as adults, we still had some awareness of each other. We just didn’t know what to make of us being an us at the time was all. We were kids and no one was around to explain it, so we had to figure it out by ourselves. Because of our lack of understanding and organization our childhood was a chaos of different headmates all talking at once. We did not have the subtle communication skills we have now which keeps everyone from having to hear everyone else’s thoughts constantly. To add to this, due to our lack of organization and awareness of each other, we think we might have had a few instances of time loss during our childhoods until we started getting some semblance of organization and communication together some time in our teens (though didn't really begin to work together and function as a system until our late teens/early adult years). This made things even more confusing to us growing up.
Even after all these years, we are still learning about ourselves as a multiple system. Occasionally, we will be able to piece yet more of our past together or gain a different understanding of our existence. Our lives together is a process of discovering and learning. We did not come to know everything we currently know about our system under a short span of time and there are things we do not know or might be mistaken about at present. We are still learning about ourselves and our relationship with one another. We are still trying to/hoping to remember a bit more of our childhood. We have learned a lot, but there is still much we do not know still. There is certainly still so many things we do not know about the cause or formation of our system at its onset.
Origins
Note: These categories are lot more like generalized categories rather than clear-cut boxes. We feel a lot of our plurality is forged from circumstances reverberating off one another in a cascade building up the state of our multiplicity as it is today. Also, while some of us might know or strongly ascribe to one thing being how they personally came to exist in our plural system, we do not deny the other things that have created our plurality as it is today. Further, while some of us primarily hold to one origin as being what caused their existence here, many of us also feel other causes influenced their existence to minor existent.
Spontaneous - Psychological: Neurodivergence
Several of us feel that perhaps part of our plurality comes from something innate within our brain make-up itself. There is an element of our neurodiversity that feels like it had a hand in the formation of our plurality to some degree or another. We already know we are neurodivergent due to being diagnosed with autism, but it feels like some kind of neurodivergence either had a hand in outright making us plural to start off with (made it so that “normal” identity development wasn’t going to happen) or made it far easier for other factors to influence our internal development. So, we feel certain that there is an neurodivergent influence to our multiplicity, but how much it had a hand in our state of being is something we are not sure of. The idea certainty seems well within the realm of possibility given how so much of the other things in our state of being (gender, nonhuman identity and experiences, and more) are connected to our brain in some way. Perhaps our brain make-up just made us preconditioned to house more than sense of self and identity.
While several us strongly feel this cause influenced their existence in system, relatively few strongly feel it is the root cause of their existence alone. Plus, due to the fact this cause is just a part of our make-up and not an event in our life, we cannot possibly know for sure if this scenario had a hand in creating any specific individuals in our system or not.
Spontaneous - Spiritual: Soul Pluralism
Our multiple system is very animistic and polytheistic. The concept of more than one soul/spirit incarnating into the same body isn't unheard among various pagan religions, past and present and some beliefs have even held the view that some people are born with more than one soul/spirit to some extent or another. So the concept isn’t wholly foreign within some pagan belief systems though how much a belief fits in with any specific belief system varies. Either way, the belief that more than one soul/spirit can incarnate into the same body is certainly within our personal spirituality and fits in nicely with our animistic beliefs and practices. Not only do we believe such a thing is possible, we also believe such a state is one of the factors that shapes the structure of our personal multiplicity. We believe this based on some spiritual experiences we’ve had over the years as well as just personal reflection and belief. We have no agreed upon cause behind more than one soul being incarnated into one body. Tied into this, the belief in reincarnation is a common thing also believed to be tied in as a "where we came from" even if they "why we got here" isn't agreed upon. Some of us believe it was an accident. Others believe it was done for some purpose linked to the calling we have in our spiritual path. Some think it is to learn something from the experience of sharing a body or perhaps to learn something about being human. Others simply don't know or don't care the cause behind the cause. To top it all within, within these various camps, some believe we had a choice in the matter while others believe a divine force placed them here.
As with another thing that influenced our multiplicity, due to this being something we believe we were born with, we can’t say for certain whom in our system owes their existence here due to this cause. A number of people believe to some level of fervency that this is how they came to be in this body, but no one knows for sure. Plus, those with this believed caused have varying options on if it was an accident or not, if they had a choice or not, and what reason was behind it. A handful of people believe their origins lay within both this and soul-splitting, but some people believe their origins lay in this alone.
Adaptive - Psychological: Trauma-caused Dissociation
Another thing we think influenced the creation of the system we are today is that trauma most certainly caused dissociation and developmental disturbances which lead to aspects of our plurality to develop. We think portions of our multiplicity came about as an adaptive means of protecting ourselves from everything that was occurring during our childhood. There were events during our childhood (some of which we are comfortable calling traumatic while other events not so much) that we know threw a wrench in our identity development. Some aspects of our trauma we are certain of (some of which we even have external verification that it occurred), but some things we only have hazy memories of and that we are less certain about. We basically have no memories of anything before the age of about 7 so there is a large time-frame that we cannot know of what occurred for sure. The traumatic events did have lasting negative impacts on us. We do not wish to go into graphic details due to both not wanting to go into such detail for our own sake and also do not wish to possibly trigger anyone else. The basics are that most of our childhood trauma was caused due to our developing sense of self and experiences being directly attacked or criticized, some trauma was from people’s treatment of us due to our autism, and there is possibly we the victim of some level of sexual abuse as a child.
We know we were both physically and verbally severely punished by family and authority figures (such as teachers, daycare workers, etc.) for early signs of being transgender (acting outside of the gender norms expected of us and for claiming to be a gender other than our sex), which starting as far back as age 5 before we finally stopped trying to talk about our feelings and thoughts around age 13 and so we stopped being punished. We know that we were also both physically and verbally severely punished by family and authority figures due to early signs of our therianthropy (or at the very least, precursors to such) simply because we were not acting like a normal child. Further making things worse is the fact we began experiencing body dysphoria pretty early on and our distress and alienation at our own body fueled dissociation from our body. We were overwhelmed by our own feelings and experiences and there were no caregivers who we could turn to.
Alongside all of that we know we also dealt with physically and verbally punished by family and authority figures for behaviors and quirks relating to our learning disability and autism. These punishments aimed to put an end to the behaviors, but they offered no way of handling the behaviors and difficulties in the first place. Aspects and symptoms of our autism both led to reprimands from uncomprehending adults and made their punishments cut all the deeper. A stern lecture at speaking-level felt more like an overwhelming cry of rage at us. A firm grabbing of an arm to halt us felt unbearably painful. Our autism made what would have been normal childhood punishments something deeply emotionally and physically painful and some of that pain still affects us today.
As for the possible sexual abuse as a child, well, a few memories that we do have make us suspect some of what we don’t remember is hiding this. We also experienced several major traumatic events (emotional abuse and sexual assault) later on in life as a young adult which we know lead to changes in the structure of our multiplicity.
A few of us know they were created due to trauma, and a number of us suspect we were created by trauma. The few we know for sure were created by trauma are almost all those who came from trauma that occurred when we were older (due to having memories before, during, and after). For those who merely suspect can only suspect due to iffy memories that aren’t conclusive.
Adaptive - Spiritual: Trauma-Caused Soul-splitting
As established in the previous section, we went through trauma during our childhood which had a massive impact on the structure of our multiplicity. Psychological ramifications are not the only thing trauma caused however. Trauma also caused some of the existing souls in our body to divide/split as a reaction to such events. The belief that souls can split or fragment due to trauma or other negative events isn’t unheard of in some animistic religions and cultures. Our spirituality holds the belief that negative life events, including but not limited to trauma, can cause the soul to split into one or more pieces. We believe some of us exist because not only did our trauma have effects on the psychology of our brain, but also affected us spiritually. We believe some people in our system were created when a soul that had been incarnated into this body split into two more pieces and then developed and grew into their own soul. In most cases, the soul-splitting divided one person into two (or more rarely, more) and the resulting individuals are similar but still district from the original. (Basically: “A” became “B” and “C”.) In few cases, the soul-splitting left the original person more or less the same as they were prior to the division. (So basically: “Y” split off from “Z” but “Z” is still recognizable as “Z.”
A handful of people hold this to be how they personally came to be in our system. A few people know they were once a part of the same soul, but a few others only suspect they once shared the same soul. Naturally this means many of them also hold their existence as being due to more than one soul incarnated into one body.
Adaptive – Psychological: Maladaptive daydreaming -> Accidental Thoughtform/Tulpa
Then there is the topic of how some of us came to be here due to a messy collision of trauma-caused dissociation, maladaptive daydreaming, and tulpamancy. Another thing our negative childhood experiences (some of which were full on trauma while other factors were just unpleasant such as isolation due to bullying and shunning throughout school due to our autism) set into motion was our use of daydreaming as a means of entertaining ourselves due to lack of any other social interaction and as means of escaping events going on around us by dissociating from reality. Normally, daydreaming is a benign form of dissociation everyone does, but as a child our need of mentally escaping from what was physically and mentally going on around us took our daydreaming to an extreme. Our use of daydreaming became excessive as our childhood circumstances that pushed us to daydream in the first place did not improve over the years. This coping skill took a maladaptive turn in our childhood and it continued through our teen years and was something we didn’t get control of until our early adulthood. During all this daydreaming our mind put a lot of focus into the characters our imagination crafted up. These entities took on a life of their own over time become distinct with their own thoughts and feelings. These headmates' origins is very similar to how tulpas/thoughtforms are created.
Some individuals are known to have been created this way, though there are others we merely suspect.
Created - Psychological/Spiritual: Thoughtform/Tulpa Creation
We took an interested in the occult and paganism due to our natural predisposition toward animistic beliefs and how naturally we experienced things like trancing and out-of-body experiences. One thing we came across fairly easily is the concept of thoughtforms as talked about in occult circles. So coming across the concept of tulpas some years later as they are talked about in the tulpamancy community made sense to us due to our background in the occult community and the multiple community. Since then we have intentionally created a few entities who are still members of our system to this day.
Due to how this origin is very intentional, there are only people who we know exist because of this.
Created- Spiritual: Wandering Spirits Joining / Walk-ins
One of the factors that complicates our multiplicity is brought on by a natural inclination toward spirit work and other animistic practices. As said earlier, we are very animistic and polytheistic and, as said in a previous section, we believe that more than one spirit/soul can be in the same body. The idea of interacting with spirits is completely normal to us and interacting with spirits comes in many forms across many different religions/cultures. A major part of our spirituality is working with and for spirits of various kinds rather than deities. Our natural inclination towards shamanic/animalistic experiences with spirits is what lead to us to our experiences with spirit possession or walk-ins. Spirit possession, channeling, and other forms of allowing spirits to work through a living body is also something not wholly foreign to a number of cultures and/or religions. In our personal practice, such spirit interactions generally comes about from our interactions with the remains of deceased animals, wandering spirits, meetings with deities.
We interact with animal bones as part of our regular spiritual practice. We move roadkill away from highways, use bones to make ritual tools, preform rites for animals that have died, and more and this often leads us to interacting with the animal dead. Occasionally, the spirit/soul of the animal who has died is still connected to their remains, and sometimes they wish for a safe place to be. Occasionally, we are the ones that give the offer to come into our body and thereby our system and occasionally they request such housing. This has been going on ever since we started bringing animal remains into our spiritual practice which began in our late teens. In other instances, we sometimes meet a spirit that is not connected to any animal remains and that interaction leads to a request or an offer depending upon circumstances. Our earliest memory of this occurring is when we were in our early teens. (On a few rare occasions, we have had a deity, spirit of species, or spirit of place appear with a spirit and told the rest of our multiple system to accept the spirit into our group and take care of them, but this is an outlier.) The explanation for this appears to be that we have been pinged as a potential place to take spirits by divine entities because we are already plural.
Our body is kind of made to attract spirits into it. As time has gone by, we have just naturally attracted more spirits to us over time. We do not all agree on why exactly that is. We don’t all agree if this spiritual calling was something we were born to do, if we just stumbled into it by some chance, or if the role was pushed onto us by divine forces. Animistic practices like trancing, out-of-body experiences, and more are things that just came naturally to us. We didn’t choose our spirituality. It is just an organic part of how we experience the world.
A number of those in our multiple system have come here because they, as spirits, came into our body for one reason or another. Several more people in our multiple system suspect they are also walk-ins who did so at a young age of this body, but due to lack of childhood memories they are not sure. Of those who we know are walk-ins, only a few are here due to an edict from a deity or influential spirit.
Unknown
As a final wrinkle in the origins of our system there is the unknown. The more we learn, the more we realize the answers are not clear cut and dry. The more we figure out the origins of our multiplicity, the more we find a complex network of factors and influences with many twists and turns. In the end, maybe the details or the real truth of it will remain a mystery. We just don't know. We will certainly continue to ponder our questions and memories, but one thing is for sure - will not consume ourselves in the past. The possibility of discovering more is there and we happily leave that window open for any breeze of insight, but not at the expense of our present. In the end, we have better things to occupy our time. Introspection comes in good time. We don't think us knowing with certainty the whole cause of our multiplicity will make a big difference to our life. We just have to accept the fact our childhood memories are filled with many gaping holes and we may or may not ever fill them. We must also accept the fact our animistic paganism which has brought spirit keeping and spirit companionship into our lives will forever muddy the waters of our existence. We must also accept the confusion over how our maladaptive daydreaming had a hand to play in the creation of many of us may forever be the rat’s nest that it is. Finally, that we must accept that our belief in souls and spirits cannot be ever proven thus forever making that part of our origin, a matter of faith and spiritual experience alone. That is where we are today: this is what we know now but maybe tomorrow we might come upon another piece to the puzzle that changes our perspective on what the big picture is.
Mixed
Obviously, the breakdown above is an oversimplification of how we view our origins. There are lot more gray areas and paradoxes undiscussed. One such example is how people who view themselves as here because of psychological trauma view themselves when it comes to their spiritual existence. Because based on our spiritual experiences they do have a soul. An oversimplification of that explanation is basically, “a soul for them formed out of the aether” which is hard to explain. That is just one of several complexities that we mull over. For another complexity, while someone might view themselves as here for spiritual reasons, they might still lean some of their existence on something psychological as well. So, suffice to say, what is above, as is this whole essay, as is this whole series of essays related to our personal plurality, is an overview of some of the aspects of our multiplicity.
Thus, Mixed-Origin Multiple System
As shown above the origins of our plurality comes from many factors coming together to create us. No one type of origin really domineers as the majority either. Even just looking at those of whom we know how they came to be here, we already fit the definition of a "mixed-origin system." Our diversity just increases when we include those who are not positive where their origins lay and only have a strong suppression at most and only a guess at the least. For those that are not sure of their origins at all, maybe one day something might jar a memory that will more clearly reveal their cause. We very well may just never know everyone's cause for being in our system, but we are okay with that.
Does Our Actual Cause Really Change Anything?
In the end, perhaps it's not about what we are, where we came from, or why we are here but more what we do with ourselves and where we are going. Or at least, that is perspective has helped us moved onward and forward in life. Whatever happened, it happened, and we can't change the past (obviously). We are here and we're here to stay no matter our origin. No matter or differing individual origins, we are still stuck being more than one sharing a single physical body. In the end, what we do know is that we have lived this way for as long as we can remember and there is no signs of the status of our condition changing any time soon. No matter how we come into existence, we exist now. However, we individually came to be here, we have to live with each other and function together now and into the future. So, however our cause, we will continue to move forward as we live and function as a plural. That is what we do know for sure at the very least.
We are a multiple system. Meaning that we are a group of individuals sharing the same physical body. What exactly caused our multiplicity is complicated to say the least with some of our origins being fairly clear and certain to us, while other aspects are vaguer or not fully known in detail. Because of the “it’s complicated” status of our origins that we consider ourselves a “mixed-origin” multiple system as it were.
We know how a number of us individually got here and have some strong guesses on some other people. For some people it was because of one specific cause or another, other people it was because of more than one cause coming into play to cause their existence here, and some people aren't sure where and how they got here. For the people less certain of their personal origins, they have our own hypotheses with varying levels of fervency to it.
What makes it hard for us to know how everyone got here is that we do not remember basically anything from our childhood before the age of about 7, and all memories after that age have us as already being aware to some degree of some of each other, switching control of front between us, etc. So we only have so much to go on as far as figuring out how our multiple system came about. Honestly, we may never be fully aware how it all got started in detail no matter how much time we could spend combing through the earliest memories that we can dredge up.
We have never, as far as our collective memory goes back, have been alone in this head/body. As far back as we can remember, we have always been a we. A majority of us have been around since we can remember much of a thing. (And those after our memories begin are not a majority and seem to have arrived after certain events throughout our life.) Even if we were not aware of each other to the true extent we are as adults, we still had some awareness of each other. We just didn’t know what to make of us being an us at the time was all. We were kids and no one was around to explain it, so we had to figure it out by ourselves. Because of our lack of understanding and organization our childhood was a chaos of different headmates all talking at once. We did not have the subtle communication skills we have now which keeps everyone from having to hear everyone else’s thoughts constantly. To add to this, due to our lack of organization and awareness of each other, we think we might have had a few instances of time loss during our childhoods until we started getting some semblance of organization and communication together some time in our teens (though didn't really begin to work together and function as a system until our late teens/early adult years). This made things even more confusing to us growing up.
Even after all these years, we are still learning about ourselves as a multiple system. Occasionally, we will be able to piece yet more of our past together or gain a different understanding of our existence. Our lives together is a process of discovering and learning. We did not come to know everything we currently know about our system under a short span of time and there are things we do not know or might be mistaken about at present. We are still learning about ourselves and our relationship with one another. We are still trying to/hoping to remember a bit more of our childhood. We have learned a lot, but there is still much we do not know still. There is certainly still so many things we do not know about the cause or formation of our system at its onset.
Origins
Note: These categories are lot more like generalized categories rather than clear-cut boxes. We feel a lot of our plurality is forged from circumstances reverberating off one another in a cascade building up the state of our multiplicity as it is today. Also, while some of us might know or strongly ascribe to one thing being how they personally came to exist in our plural system, we do not deny the other things that have created our plurality as it is today. Further, while some of us primarily hold to one origin as being what caused their existence here, many of us also feel other causes influenced their existence to minor existent.
Spontaneous - Psychological: Neurodivergence
Several of us feel that perhaps part of our plurality comes from something innate within our brain make-up itself. There is an element of our neurodiversity that feels like it had a hand in the formation of our plurality to some degree or another. We already know we are neurodivergent due to being diagnosed with autism, but it feels like some kind of neurodivergence either had a hand in outright making us plural to start off with (made it so that “normal” identity development wasn’t going to happen) or made it far easier for other factors to influence our internal development. So, we feel certain that there is an neurodivergent influence to our multiplicity, but how much it had a hand in our state of being is something we are not sure of. The idea certainty seems well within the realm of possibility given how so much of the other things in our state of being (gender, nonhuman identity and experiences, and more) are connected to our brain in some way. Perhaps our brain make-up just made us preconditioned to house more than sense of self and identity.
While several us strongly feel this cause influenced their existence in system, relatively few strongly feel it is the root cause of their existence alone. Plus, due to the fact this cause is just a part of our make-up and not an event in our life, we cannot possibly know for sure if this scenario had a hand in creating any specific individuals in our system or not.
Spontaneous - Spiritual: Soul Pluralism
Our multiple system is very animistic and polytheistic. The concept of more than one soul/spirit incarnating into the same body isn't unheard among various pagan religions, past and present and some beliefs have even held the view that some people are born with more than one soul/spirit to some extent or another. So the concept isn’t wholly foreign within some pagan belief systems though how much a belief fits in with any specific belief system varies. Either way, the belief that more than one soul/spirit can incarnate into the same body is certainly within our personal spirituality and fits in nicely with our animistic beliefs and practices. Not only do we believe such a thing is possible, we also believe such a state is one of the factors that shapes the structure of our personal multiplicity. We believe this based on some spiritual experiences we’ve had over the years as well as just personal reflection and belief. We have no agreed upon cause behind more than one soul being incarnated into one body. Tied into this, the belief in reincarnation is a common thing also believed to be tied in as a "where we came from" even if they "why we got here" isn't agreed upon. Some of us believe it was an accident. Others believe it was done for some purpose linked to the calling we have in our spiritual path. Some think it is to learn something from the experience of sharing a body or perhaps to learn something about being human. Others simply don't know or don't care the cause behind the cause. To top it all within, within these various camps, some believe we had a choice in the matter while others believe a divine force placed them here.
As with another thing that influenced our multiplicity, due to this being something we believe we were born with, we can’t say for certain whom in our system owes their existence here due to this cause. A number of people believe to some level of fervency that this is how they came to be in this body, but no one knows for sure. Plus, those with this believed caused have varying options on if it was an accident or not, if they had a choice or not, and what reason was behind it. A handful of people believe their origins lay within both this and soul-splitting, but some people believe their origins lay in this alone.
Adaptive - Psychological: Trauma-caused Dissociation
Another thing we think influenced the creation of the system we are today is that trauma most certainly caused dissociation and developmental disturbances which lead to aspects of our plurality to develop. We think portions of our multiplicity came about as an adaptive means of protecting ourselves from everything that was occurring during our childhood. There were events during our childhood (some of which we are comfortable calling traumatic while other events not so much) that we know threw a wrench in our identity development. Some aspects of our trauma we are certain of (some of which we even have external verification that it occurred), but some things we only have hazy memories of and that we are less certain about. We basically have no memories of anything before the age of about 7 so there is a large time-frame that we cannot know of what occurred for sure. The traumatic events did have lasting negative impacts on us. We do not wish to go into graphic details due to both not wanting to go into such detail for our own sake and also do not wish to possibly trigger anyone else. The basics are that most of our childhood trauma was caused due to our developing sense of self and experiences being directly attacked or criticized, some trauma was from people’s treatment of us due to our autism, and there is possibly we the victim of some level of sexual abuse as a child.
We know we were both physically and verbally severely punished by family and authority figures (such as teachers, daycare workers, etc.) for early signs of being transgender (acting outside of the gender norms expected of us and for claiming to be a gender other than our sex), which starting as far back as age 5 before we finally stopped trying to talk about our feelings and thoughts around age 13 and so we stopped being punished. We know that we were also both physically and verbally severely punished by family and authority figures due to early signs of our therianthropy (or at the very least, precursors to such) simply because we were not acting like a normal child. Further making things worse is the fact we began experiencing body dysphoria pretty early on and our distress and alienation at our own body fueled dissociation from our body. We were overwhelmed by our own feelings and experiences and there were no caregivers who we could turn to.
Alongside all of that we know we also dealt with physically and verbally punished by family and authority figures for behaviors and quirks relating to our learning disability and autism. These punishments aimed to put an end to the behaviors, but they offered no way of handling the behaviors and difficulties in the first place. Aspects and symptoms of our autism both led to reprimands from uncomprehending adults and made their punishments cut all the deeper. A stern lecture at speaking-level felt more like an overwhelming cry of rage at us. A firm grabbing of an arm to halt us felt unbearably painful. Our autism made what would have been normal childhood punishments something deeply emotionally and physically painful and some of that pain still affects us today.
As for the possible sexual abuse as a child, well, a few memories that we do have make us suspect some of what we don’t remember is hiding this. We also experienced several major traumatic events (emotional abuse and sexual assault) later on in life as a young adult which we know lead to changes in the structure of our multiplicity.
A few of us know they were created due to trauma, and a number of us suspect we were created by trauma. The few we know for sure were created by trauma are almost all those who came from trauma that occurred when we were older (due to having memories before, during, and after). For those who merely suspect can only suspect due to iffy memories that aren’t conclusive.
Adaptive - Spiritual: Trauma-Caused Soul-splitting
As established in the previous section, we went through trauma during our childhood which had a massive impact on the structure of our multiplicity. Psychological ramifications are not the only thing trauma caused however. Trauma also caused some of the existing souls in our body to divide/split as a reaction to such events. The belief that souls can split or fragment due to trauma or other negative events isn’t unheard of in some animistic religions and cultures. Our spirituality holds the belief that negative life events, including but not limited to trauma, can cause the soul to split into one or more pieces. We believe some of us exist because not only did our trauma have effects on the psychology of our brain, but also affected us spiritually. We believe some people in our system were created when a soul that had been incarnated into this body split into two more pieces and then developed and grew into their own soul. In most cases, the soul-splitting divided one person into two (or more rarely, more) and the resulting individuals are similar but still district from the original. (Basically: “A” became “B” and “C”.) In few cases, the soul-splitting left the original person more or less the same as they were prior to the division. (So basically: “Y” split off from “Z” but “Z” is still recognizable as “Z.”
A handful of people hold this to be how they personally came to be in our system. A few people know they were once a part of the same soul, but a few others only suspect they once shared the same soul. Naturally this means many of them also hold their existence as being due to more than one soul incarnated into one body.
Adaptive – Psychological: Maladaptive daydreaming -> Accidental Thoughtform/Tulpa
Then there is the topic of how some of us came to be here due to a messy collision of trauma-caused dissociation, maladaptive daydreaming, and tulpamancy. Another thing our negative childhood experiences (some of which were full on trauma while other factors were just unpleasant such as isolation due to bullying and shunning throughout school due to our autism) set into motion was our use of daydreaming as a means of entertaining ourselves due to lack of any other social interaction and as means of escaping events going on around us by dissociating from reality. Normally, daydreaming is a benign form of dissociation everyone does, but as a child our need of mentally escaping from what was physically and mentally going on around us took our daydreaming to an extreme. Our use of daydreaming became excessive as our childhood circumstances that pushed us to daydream in the first place did not improve over the years. This coping skill took a maladaptive turn in our childhood and it continued through our teen years and was something we didn’t get control of until our early adulthood. During all this daydreaming our mind put a lot of focus into the characters our imagination crafted up. These entities took on a life of their own over time become distinct with their own thoughts and feelings. These headmates' origins is very similar to how tulpas/thoughtforms are created.
Some individuals are known to have been created this way, though there are others we merely suspect.
Created - Psychological/Spiritual: Thoughtform/Tulpa Creation
We took an interested in the occult and paganism due to our natural predisposition toward animistic beliefs and how naturally we experienced things like trancing and out-of-body experiences. One thing we came across fairly easily is the concept of thoughtforms as talked about in occult circles. So coming across the concept of tulpas some years later as they are talked about in the tulpamancy community made sense to us due to our background in the occult community and the multiple community. Since then we have intentionally created a few entities who are still members of our system to this day.
Due to how this origin is very intentional, there are only people who we know exist because of this.
Created- Spiritual: Wandering Spirits Joining / Walk-ins
One of the factors that complicates our multiplicity is brought on by a natural inclination toward spirit work and other animistic practices. As said earlier, we are very animistic and polytheistic and, as said in a previous section, we believe that more than one spirit/soul can be in the same body. The idea of interacting with spirits is completely normal to us and interacting with spirits comes in many forms across many different religions/cultures. A major part of our spirituality is working with and for spirits of various kinds rather than deities. Our natural inclination towards shamanic/animalistic experiences with spirits is what lead to us to our experiences with spirit possession or walk-ins. Spirit possession, channeling, and other forms of allowing spirits to work through a living body is also something not wholly foreign to a number of cultures and/or religions. In our personal practice, such spirit interactions generally comes about from our interactions with the remains of deceased animals, wandering spirits, meetings with deities.
We interact with animal bones as part of our regular spiritual practice. We move roadkill away from highways, use bones to make ritual tools, preform rites for animals that have died, and more and this often leads us to interacting with the animal dead. Occasionally, the spirit/soul of the animal who has died is still connected to their remains, and sometimes they wish for a safe place to be. Occasionally, we are the ones that give the offer to come into our body and thereby our system and occasionally they request such housing. This has been going on ever since we started bringing animal remains into our spiritual practice which began in our late teens. In other instances, we sometimes meet a spirit that is not connected to any animal remains and that interaction leads to a request or an offer depending upon circumstances. Our earliest memory of this occurring is when we were in our early teens. (On a few rare occasions, we have had a deity, spirit of species, or spirit of place appear with a spirit and told the rest of our multiple system to accept the spirit into our group and take care of them, but this is an outlier.) The explanation for this appears to be that we have been pinged as a potential place to take spirits by divine entities because we are already plural.
Our body is kind of made to attract spirits into it. As time has gone by, we have just naturally attracted more spirits to us over time. We do not all agree on why exactly that is. We don’t all agree if this spiritual calling was something we were born to do, if we just stumbled into it by some chance, or if the role was pushed onto us by divine forces. Animistic practices like trancing, out-of-body experiences, and more are things that just came naturally to us. We didn’t choose our spirituality. It is just an organic part of how we experience the world.
A number of those in our multiple system have come here because they, as spirits, came into our body for one reason or another. Several more people in our multiple system suspect they are also walk-ins who did so at a young age of this body, but due to lack of childhood memories they are not sure. Of those who we know are walk-ins, only a few are here due to an edict from a deity or influential spirit.
Unknown
As a final wrinkle in the origins of our system there is the unknown. The more we learn, the more we realize the answers are not clear cut and dry. The more we figure out the origins of our multiplicity, the more we find a complex network of factors and influences with many twists and turns. In the end, maybe the details or the real truth of it will remain a mystery. We just don't know. We will certainly continue to ponder our questions and memories, but one thing is for sure - will not consume ourselves in the past. The possibility of discovering more is there and we happily leave that window open for any breeze of insight, but not at the expense of our present. In the end, we have better things to occupy our time. Introspection comes in good time. We don't think us knowing with certainty the whole cause of our multiplicity will make a big difference to our life. We just have to accept the fact our childhood memories are filled with many gaping holes and we may or may not ever fill them. We must also accept the fact our animistic paganism which has brought spirit keeping and spirit companionship into our lives will forever muddy the waters of our existence. We must also accept the confusion over how our maladaptive daydreaming had a hand to play in the creation of many of us may forever be the rat’s nest that it is. Finally, that we must accept that our belief in souls and spirits cannot be ever proven thus forever making that part of our origin, a matter of faith and spiritual experience alone. That is where we are today: this is what we know now but maybe tomorrow we might come upon another piece to the puzzle that changes our perspective on what the big picture is.
Mixed
Obviously, the breakdown above is an oversimplification of how we view our origins. There are lot more gray areas and paradoxes undiscussed. One such example is how people who view themselves as here because of psychological trauma view themselves when it comes to their spiritual existence. Because based on our spiritual experiences they do have a soul. An oversimplification of that explanation is basically, “a soul for them formed out of the aether” which is hard to explain. That is just one of several complexities that we mull over. For another complexity, while someone might view themselves as here for spiritual reasons, they might still lean some of their existence on something psychological as well. So, suffice to say, what is above, as is this whole essay, as is this whole series of essays related to our personal plurality, is an overview of some of the aspects of our multiplicity.
Thus, Mixed-Origin Multiple System
As shown above the origins of our plurality comes from many factors coming together to create us. No one type of origin really domineers as the majority either. Even just looking at those of whom we know how they came to be here, we already fit the definition of a "mixed-origin system." Our diversity just increases when we include those who are not positive where their origins lay and only have a strong suppression at most and only a guess at the least. For those that are not sure of their origins at all, maybe one day something might jar a memory that will more clearly reveal their cause. We very well may just never know everyone's cause for being in our system, but we are okay with that.
Does Our Actual Cause Really Change Anything?
In the end, perhaps it's not about what we are, where we came from, or why we are here but more what we do with ourselves and where we are going. Or at least, that is perspective has helped us moved onward and forward in life. Whatever happened, it happened, and we can't change the past (obviously). We are here and we're here to stay no matter our origin. No matter or differing individual origins, we are still stuck being more than one sharing a single physical body. In the end, what we do know is that we have lived this way for as long as we can remember and there is no signs of the status of our condition changing any time soon. No matter how we come into existence, we exist now. However, we individually came to be here, we have to live with each other and function together now and into the future. So, however our cause, we will continue to move forward as we live and function as a plural. That is what we do know for sure at the very least.
