Newly Realized System and Needing Help and Advice.
Hello all, I hope you’re doing well today. I want to preface this by saying it’s a long post and we’ve done our best to make it as concise as possible over three + hours of editing and we really appreciate any help you can offer us as the realization that we’re a system is really new. Thank you! Also it should be noted that I’m currently seeking out a therapist who has experience helping systems, but need more immediate advice from people in the community.
The system as a whole right now responds to Bunny, body 22, just graduated undergrad, and body is mostly androgynous/trans feminine and uses They/She pronouns.
To begin, the realization that I or we are a system is quite recent, two to three months ago when we got high for the first time. I took way to many edibles (six), and I was laying on the floor having these amnesia like episodes where I came back to consciousness with no idea where the conversation currently was (this happens when I get high any amount, the higher I am the longer the duration, any thoughts?) and during a brief 10 minute or less period of being conscious, I, or Bunny, she, or me, had the realization that I or we were alone in our head for the first time and that we are a system.
Who I have considered to be me, (the person who is conscious and typing this and who has responded to and gone by Bunny for many years), is a collection of I believe three or maybe more alts all co-fronting constantly and that makes me, a distinct personality separate from each of the alts, or maybe I’m just Bunny but I get changed by the presence of the others. The only time a single alt been observed being by themselves was when Bunny was alone when the body was really high. I have her memories from that moment and it was me in that moment, but I was drastically different than who I’ve come to know myself. In everyday life now, it feels like who I’ve gone back to who I was before, being affected by whoever else is co-fronting, or just I am the combination of three or so alts all together. From what I can tell the most common characters who make me up are; Bunny (age 22 or older, is where I’ve gotten my name as she or I has had the highest percentage of control and has been host for ten years, she or I developed somewhere in late middle school at 12 or 13 body years old and was made to handle the adult world/manage and get through everything. Shes a girl/caused the body/us to be a trans feminine person on HRT), second, our trauma carrier (name unknown, age unknown, most likely younger as we/I age regress when having episodes where where we’re in a lot of pain), and third, C (original personality/alt, C is a placeholder for the body’s legal name that starts with C).
One of the first things I need help on is advice about understanding my consciousness. Who I feel the me that I’ve come to know myself is, is a culmination of these three, and the rare few times in the last couple months that it seems someone else has had a higher percentage control than me, I still feel like who I’ve come to know myself to be, a combination of these three or more, and I don’t get the character traits of Bunny when she or I was alone. Because of this it almost seems like I’m a system in a system, I the three, get pushed back when others outside me start to co-front more. I’m not sure. I’d really like any advice on that.
Sort of second what I want advice on is this overarching feeling that there is more. I’m really struggling because even though my experience of always co-fronting alts is that of OSDD, there feels to be more as this can’t be the end result. I am still trapped in my brain as I always have been, and since realizing I’m a system I still on occasion have laid in bed rolling around, crying and asking for whatever invisible force in my head causing me pain to leave me alone. I’m trapped in my own mind and I know that the not fully switching/co-fronting is describing what OSDD is, but for so much of my life there has been this pain, this longing for a simplicity. I want to exist with the feeling of just being by myself. When I or Bunny was by herself when high, an alt existing alone for the first time in my entire life, it was so happy, there wasn’t any pain that was being held, my trauma carrier and original alt weren’t there, and it was beautiful seeing an alt just get to exist. I want that. I also (in whatever way that means), also want to be able to step back and take a break, and let others see the beauty in this world. I’d love for C to get the chance to reclaim some childhood innocence that was taken from them. At three at three and five C experienced trauma and I assume weren’t ever alone again and I’d want them to get the chance to front without any co-fronting and play with Lego and such. I’d want the little that might be my trauma carrier to be able to see a beautiful sunset and sunrise by themselves and maybe heal a tiny bit. I know there are the complications of having to figure out who you are in the moment with fully switching, I just feel like I’m not where I’m supposed to be yet, that something is behind a locked door, that maybe I’m intended to fully switch. As I’ve said, I’m trapped in my mind, and there feels like something else is supposed to be happening. Often, and even while typing this, my eyes and I get pulled back a little ways in my head to this dark ocean in my brain and there’s this noise that I assume is created by the thoughts and feelings of everyone else and I keep trying to tell them they can front, they can take control that I’m ok with it and actually want that, but so far nothing happens when I ask.
Does anyone have any advice? Anything at all would really help and be greatly appreciated.
Thank you so much for your time,
I and we wish you all our best,
~ Bunny and whoever else idk. (They/she/sometimes he