In ”Ask Stronghold” the Stronghold System, founders of The Plural Association Nonprofit and this Power to the Plurals website – shares their own answers to frequently asked questions, from a peer perspective.
Todays question is ”How do we set guidelines for Alters in our System?”
Setting guidelines for your System is one of the most asked about topics in Plural life, and also one of the most misunderstood. The word “rules” alone is enough to make some Headmates shut down completely, and honestly, we get it.
In our System we don’t use the word rules at all. We use guidelines, built around our collective values and goals, because the difference matters. Rules imply enforcement. Guidelines imply trust.
And here is the thing nobody tells you: writing the guidelines is actually the easy part.
What is the really hard thing to learn and work through, is accepting that anyone in our System can make a mistake tomorrow. Inevitably, it is going to happen and having a plan in place and sticking with it on those days, is the most healing experience but also the hardest thing to do.
We do this by working with something called ”the assumption of positive intent.” We practice this inside our System, outside our System and with The Plural Association, that is how much this practice changed our collective System life. It is not an easy thing to do though, We’re calling it a practice on purpose because it really takes continued practice. We also dive more deeply into this in the ”Empowered Plurality Plural Practice” training within The Plural Association Community.
What is means is that we back each other up, and that when one of us (inevitability) makes a mistake and falls, we together help to rise that person back up again. For our System this is as much ”System responsibility” as acknowledging and making amends for the mistake collectively together.
Together we follow the guidelines we set out for our System, we remind each other in love, we provide each other different options that fall within the guidelines, we hold each other accountable and we hold each other close when it all feels unfair and too much.
We all make mistakes and we want our System, inside and outside, to be a place where it is safe to make mistakes and where we can trust each other to build and lift each other up again after or during mistakes.
Lastly, it’s all about harm reduction. So sure it sucks if someone wasted my evening by binge watching a show and we agreed we wouldn’t, but it could be 100 times worse. So I really pick my battles in that regards and sometimes it can help to ask why someone did it, to communicate about it from a place of understanding rather than agreement.
Sometimes I get answers like, we also agreed you wouldn’t volunteer 8 hours a day and here we are, so I forced us to relax. What else can I say to that, but thank you. Our guidelines sometimes overlap in these areas, or my not following the guidelines, leads to someone else not following them either and vice versa. Ask someone neutral in your System to mediate if that helps.
We hope this helps, more soon in the Plural Practice ”Empowered Plurality” inside The Plural Association Community. Watch the video for more information. Click the button under the video to visit The Plural Association Community. – Rose (he/him) and Skylar (they/them.)
As always, we encourage you and your System to follow your own truth, to soul search, to find words, labels, visions, theories and communities that aren’t only within your values but also match your lived experience and/or long term goals, so that you might find belonging and don’t have to try to fit in.
Thank you for investing the time to read this article. Please, feel free to leave comments or feedback in the comment section.
The Plural Association is the first and only grassroots, volunteer and peer-led nonprofit empowering Plurals. Our works, including resources like this, are only possible because of support from Plurals and our allies.
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Disclaimer: Thank you for reading our peer article; we hope it was empowering, informative and helpful for you and your System. There are as many Plural experiences, as there are Plurals. So not all information on this website might apply to your situation or be helpful to you; please, use caution. We’re not doctors or clinicians and our nonprofit, our work, and this website in no way provide medical advice, nor does it replace therapy or medication in other ways.
About the authors
The Stronghold System are the proud volunteer founders & CEO of The Plural Association Nonprofit. They are from the Netherlands and reside in a 30-something-year-old body, are nonbinary, parents of an amazing child & 3 cats. They got diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder over 10 years ago & also self ID as Plural.