Hello from us, the Lavalamp System!
We created this blog because one, we want to help other plural folks and let them know they’re not alone, second, we are still at the start of our journey ourselves and hope that journaling will help make sense of our internal world.
Why a whole website?
First off, our dear Sky (host-ish) is a big computer nerd and wanted to build a website since forever. So this was the perfect occasion to finally do so and spend a whole weekend in front of the computer. Voíla, that’s what you’re seeing right here! Okay, it’s a little rough around the edges, but whatever.
Second of all, we know a good chunk of the community is on Reddit or Tumblr. We could just post there, right? Yes, but no. We used to spend a lot of time there but honestly, we found those spaces (or Reddit at least) to be kind of repetitive after a while. A good portion of systems represented there just don’t share our experiences at all: They are fictive-heavy, their systems fluctuate a lot and new members form often, most are not monocon, and so on. There is nothing wrong with that, of course! But not seeing yourselves represented there felt scary and invalidating. Then there is Tumblr, but we just never really “got” it. Like, we have it on our phone, and we use it from time to time, but we just never really get into it, even if we try. So we turned to google, ignored all the Reddit links, and found many small websites just like this one, and that’s where we found other systems that also don’t neatly fit into all the labels or the way other platforms present plurality (again, no hate if you are one of those systems! :) ). Seeing yourselves represented somewhere and sharing experiences with others is such a vital part of who we are as humans: We have a need to belong somewhere and with someone, so we want to give back to the community by running this website!
Why we do this and who we are
As we just elaborated, we don’t feel like our experiences are talked about a lot, or at least we haven’t found those spaces yet.
We are a mostly monoconscious system with (at the point of writing) under 5 system members. We share a lot of information and switches don’t feel dramatic at all. We behave, think and feel differently (duh), but the actual act of switching doesn’t feel like anything most of the time, really. Sometimes, the switch is pretty easily identifiable: It’s a rough cut between two members. At one moment in time, the world feels kind, nice and warm, I am Sky, I feel confident and light; The very next moment, my limbs are heavy. Wait, no, they’re just relaxed. Damn, I was tense before… What the hell. I feel… Dull. It’s a dog eat dog world, and I know I will survive no matter what, and I am Kira. Suddenly I don’t remember what I did the last few years, or maybe I do, but the memories are off. I roughly know there is some information that is just out of reach, and Sky has to hand it to me, or I know the gist of what happened but I wasn’t there. Like reading notes off a paper. Then at other times, and that’s how it usually goes, we fluctuate. One second, I lean more towards Kira, the next I melt into Sky, then we melt into the other person. That’s why our name is the Lavalamp System: Our consciousnesses blend into each other, sometimes they form separate bubbles and take up all the space, but it’s always a dance between one another.
If we don’t focus and practice mindefulness, a certain someone of us takes over, dissociates far far away, and everyone becomes soupy and hard to discern from one another.
We have pretty solid internal communication. We can basically think at each other. Sometimes (although that’s rare) thpughts from others feel like hearing someone talk right next to you. most of the time, it just feels like a thought, but with a certain texture or weight.
Syscovery
We had our syscovery (aka the date when we had our first experience of “more than one” and suddenly there was someone else inside of our head) at the beginning of the year. We had been in trauma therapy for some time at that point and had already done lots of parts work, mostly using the IFS framework. We had grown frustrated with IFS for a while because there didn’t seem to be a “Self” as described and each attempt at “unblending” made the so called part cling harder. Our then therapist didn’t do much parts work, we were spiralling and in a rough spot in general. We were just DONE. As a coping mechanism we read book after book trying to get out of survival mode or at least to not spiral even more. We reread Janina Fisher’s Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors and tried a small exercise (the one where you “take your inner child under wings” if you read the book) and boom. I felt like I truly “saw” for the very first time, like I took a step back and saw the big picture: there is more than one consciousness in “my” head. We talked and… I was freaked out. Talking to one another was hearing the other person like you are actually conversing with another person standing next to you. I felt her presence, and it was foreign and just wrong. For the next months, I tried to push everything (and her) down and pretended like none of it happened. But it made our mental health even worse and I reached a point where I HAD to confront her. When I finally told our then therapist about all of this, he basically told us multiplicity isn’t real and “it will all settle down with time”. This was absolutely terrible for us as you can imagine and we are still dealing with the consequences today. So in the case you are a therapist reading this, obviously do NOT do that, but I guess if you’re reading this far I am just preaching to the choir.
Looking back I think it’s kind of funny how at first, I didn’t know I was deeply traumatized. I just knew there was something wrong with me, that there was something terribly off inside of me and that must be the reason why I was not happy, why I disliked living, why I found no joy in anything, and why I could not bear to be alone with myself for longer than a second. Therapists diagnosed me with chronic depression or anxiety but conventional CBT never helped. Guess I didn’t “reframe my perspective” enough. Or maybe, just maybe, those diagnoses just didn’t fit. Nobody suspected that I had (and still have) CPTSD however. One day I just stumbled across the term and wanted to know what all those letters meant. For some weird reason (lol) I kept googling. Yeah I couldn’t possibly have that, I just want to know all the details on why I FOR SURE don’t have it. Okay, after a while I was pretty sure and found a trauma informed therapist who diagnosed me, and that’s when finally started my healing journey. But what I find notable is that I didn’t display enough CPTSD symptoms to be diagnosed, let alone symptoms of a dissociative disorder, at first. I first had to heal enough for “the dissociation” (don’t have a more precise word for it) to go away and reveal the trauma symptoms going on underneath. I believe that’s what happened to me when I found out I am more than one as well: I had healed enough to let more ice of dissociation melt, and what revealed itself to me was another wonderful consciousness that had always existed inside, I just didn’t know. (As I am writing this, I suddenly hear ringing in my ears, panic is rising in my chest, and I fell lightheaded. Guess I am onto something here.)
With patience, we found at least two other system members. This is still an ongoing process but we haven’t found other parts in many months so… I guess there’s four of us!
Pronouns
We just use what feels right in the moment. Sometimes it feels important to highlight our distinctness and “we” fits best, sometimes I feel like talking from what many in the community like to call “the persistent I”.